I have watched a TV programme called ‘Fear Factor.’ In the series there are contestants who have to confront their worst fears to see who bails out and who can fight the fear and get through.

People who are afraid of heights are made to Bungee-jump off a high bridge, and people who are scared of spiders or insects are made to get in a bath full of spiders.

In virtually all cases the contestants later say that the fearful experience was not actually as bad as they feared. So the fear of the fear was greater than the fear itself ‘when the chips were down.’

This is often the case in life, that the fear of some factor turns out to be worse than the experience itself. The human mind builds a very scary image in the imagination. The imagination then feeds the fear.

If the picture in the imagination is not very specific or clear it is worse, because the fear factor feeds on the unknown.

This is what has happened in the public mind concerning nuclear power over the last half century. Concepts concerning nuclear reactions and nuclear radiation are in themselves complicated and mysterious.

Over the last couple of decades physics advances in fields such as quantum mechanics, which is linked to nuclear processes has compounded matters for the public. The image of strong and mysterious forces and effects is now well entrenched. There are Hollywood movies and TV programmes about space travellers or alien invaders who use time travel and quantum forces, and then battle to evade the dangerous intergalactic nuclear zones.

A consequence of all this is that internationally the public is now really ‘spooked’ when it comes to the topic of nuclear power. A real ‘fear factor’ looms over the mere word ‘nuclear.’ Newspapers love this, and really push imagery like; ‘nuclear leak’ or ‘radiation exposure.’

To a nuclear physicist like me, I look upon such public reaction half with amusement and half with dismay. The amusement comes from the fact that so many people can be scared so easily by so little. It is like shouting: “Ghost in the bedroom,” and everyone runs and hides in the hills.

The dismay reaction is that there is a body of anti-nuclear activists who do not want the public to know the truth, and the anti-nukes enjoy stoking the fear factor and maintaining public ignorance.

Let us now ponder the Fukushima nuclear incident which has been in the news again lately.

Firstly let us get something clear. There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster. Total number of people killed by nuclear radiation at Fukushima was zero. Total injured by radiation was zero. Total private property damaged by radiation….zero. There was no nuclear disaster. What there was, was a major media feeding frenzy fuelled by the rather remote possibility that there may have been a major radiation leak.

At the time, there was media frenzy that “reactors at Fukushima may suffer a core meltdown.” Dire warnings were issued. Well the reactors did suffer a core meltdown. What happened? Nothing.

Certainly from the ‘disaster’ perspective there was a financial disaster for the owners of the Fukushima plant. The plant overheated, suffered a core meltdown, and is now out of commission for ever. A financial disaster, but no nuclear disaster.

Amazingly the thousands of people killed by the tsunami in the neighbouring areas who were in shops, offices, schools, at the airport, in the harbour and elsewhere are essentially ignored while there is this strange continuing phobia about warning people of ‘the dangers of Fukushima.’ We need to ask the more general question: did anybody die because of Fukushima? Yes they did. Why? The Japanese government introduced a forced evacuation of thousands of people living up to a couple of dozen kilometres from the power station. The stress of moving to collection areas induced heart attacks and other medical problems in many people. So people died because of Fukushima hysteria not because of Fukushima radiation.

Recently some water leaked out of the Fukushima plant. It contained a very small amount of radioactive dust. The news media quoted the radiation activity in the physics measure of miliSieverts. The public don’t know what a Sievert or a milliSievert is. As it happens a milliSievert is a very small measure.

Doubling a very small amount is still inconsequential. It is like saying: “Yesterday there was a matchstick on the football field; today there are two matchsticks on the football field. Matchstick pollution has increased by a massive 100% in only 24 hours.”

The statement is mathematically correct but silly and misleading.

At Fukushima a couple of weeks ago, some mildly radioactive water leaked into the sea. The volume of water was about equal to a dozen home swimming pools. In the ocean this really is a ‘drop in the ocean.’

The radiation content was so little that people could swim in the ocean without the slightest cause for concern. Any ocean naturally contains some radioactivity all of the time anyway. There is natural radiation around us all of the time and has always been there since the birth of the earth.

Understandably the general public do not understand nuclear radiation so the strangest comments occur. On an internet blog some person stated that people on the north coast of Australia must be warned about the radiation in the sea coming from Fukushima. Good grief!

Meantime the Fukushima site now looks like an oil refinery. A lot of storage tanks have been built there to hold water that has been flushed through the damaged reactors to aid in cooling. Quite frankly, scientifically speaking, the best thing to do with the mildly radioactive waste water would be to intentionally pour it into the sea. The water which is currently in the new Fukushima storage tanks has already been filtered to remove radioactive Caesium.

All that is left is a bit of radioactive Tritium. Tritium is actually part of the water molecule anyway…so what we really have is…well, water in water. The Tritium atom is a hydrogen atom, which has two neutrons in its nucleus which is a normal but rare variation in the hydrogen atom. Most hydrogen atoms have only a single proton in the nucleus and no neutrons. A rare hydrogen variation is called Deuterium and such atoms have one proton plus one neutron. Even rarer than Deuterium is the Tritium form of hydrogen which has one proton plus two neutrons. These variants are known as isotopes. Water is H2O and water molecules in which the Tritium isotope of the hydrogen atom is found are molecules referred to as ‘Heavy Water.’ It really is just water, so you can’t filter it out of the normal ‘light water.’

The Tritium heavy water is very mildly radioactive and is found normally in the sea all over the world all of the time. This Tritium concentration in the one thousand storage tanks at Fukushima is higher than that found naturally in the sea, but is still so low as to pose no real danger at all.

No doubt the Japanese government is too scared to release this water into the sea because of the howl of criticism which would no doubt follow.

A further complication is that in the last couple of weeks the press has reported further spillage of water. These reports are such that it looks like a continuous failure of the Fukushima engineers to contain the situation.

The latest spillage was about 400 litres of water, which is about as much liquid as would fill four motor car fuel tanks. Reportedly, one of the one thousand storage tanks was not totally horizontal when it was built so when it was filled to the top some water overflowed on one side.

As soon as the spillage occurred they fixed the problem. But the rules require the incident to be reported, even though the spillage was not of any biological consequence to anyone, or to any fauna or flora.

The Fukushima incident will continue to attract media attention for some time to come, I imagine. It has become such a good story to roll with that it will not just go away. However, in sober reflection and retrospection one has to come to the conclusion that far from being a nuclear disaster the Fukushima incident was actually a wonderful illustration of the safety of nuclear power.

The largest earthquake and consequent tsunami on record struck an ageing nuclear power plant which was built to a now obsolete boiling water reactor technology, and no nuclear damage resulted to people and property in the neighbourhood.

Poor management systems compounded matters and were implicated in the failure of the cooling circuit. The reactor cores suffered a meltdown. Due to the magnitude of the tsunami disaster there were no emergency services able to help, they were deployed elsewhere or paralysed because there were no roads or infrastructure available.

Hydrogen gas leaked out of a reactor, collected under the building’s roof and then exploded, blowing the roof off in front of the world’s TV cameras. Fukushima had devices called ‘recombiners’ designed to prevent the hydrogen build-up but they were not working because they needed an external electricity supply.

Financially speaking and operationally speaking the reactors were wrecked, but nobody was killed or injured by any nuclear radiation.

Fukushima showed that a nuclear power plant can take the maximum punch of nature’s brutality, and yet the surrounding population does not fry and die as so often dramatically predicted by the fear factor enthusiasts.

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Dr Kelvin Kemm is the CEO of Nuclear Africa, a nuclear project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a member of the International Board of Advisors of CFACT. Dr. Kemm received the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa.

Very interesting article. As much as I know that media bias exists, I did not realize that this was so exaggerated. Thank you for explaining it so that people without nuclear physics degrees can understand the truth.

Best comment here. Sure, it is perfectly correct to say that physical damage and deaths from Fukushima were non-existent when compared to the earthquake impact. However, the impact of raised levels of background radiation will be insidious and multi-generational and it is disingenuous to suggest that raised radiation levels are not of relevance. This person has been a lobbyist for the nuclear industry and he has no background, as far as I can see, regarding the effects of radiation on biological systems.

Of course there are. This has the potential to be more than normal background radiation though.

Even background radiation can be a problem – studies have shown that naturally occurring Radon in unventilated spaces will raise the incidence of lung cancer. But you live in your deluded world. It’s your choice.

Potential?? I choose to live with facts, not maybe’s of a slim possibility. If you choose to worry about F-D, how do you explain the vibrancy of life in the Pacific region after the nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific (1947-62)? Cousteau found lots of sea animals. Or the wildlife preserve around Chernobyl?
There is a safe dosage for radiation – higher than IAEA guidelines.

You don’t know what you are talking about. Effects of radiation on human body is part of the curriculum of nuclear physicists, radioprotection physicists, nuclear medicine physicists and most physicists in a field related and/or using radioactive material.

Nice try to discredite nuclear physicists. They are among the ones with most knowledge in the field.

If you really, seriously, actually believe that there is no safe dose of radiation, then it is your moral duty to insist long and loudly that the city of Denver be immediately evacuated.

Because the citizens there receive 7 milliSieverts just from living next to that ginormous pile of granite called the Rocky Mountains. And they get a few more if they have a granite countertop, and radon in the basement. And fly off to see the grand folks once a year.

Hmmm… that’s odd. I don’t hear you shouting in panic and rage from your flung-open window.

The statement “there is no safe dose” is just simply flat-out factually incorrect. Period. It’s fear-mongering propaganda and nothing more.

A yearly dose at or below 100 milliSieverts results in no uptick in cancer rates. Google the 2012 report from United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).

Long story short – the Linear No-Threshold Theory (LNT ) harped on by the anti-nuke crowd is not a theory at all. It’s a hypothesis, and an unproven one at that. It’s just a wild-ass guess that Dr, Mueller, a nobel prize winner, came up with in 1947, that the anti-nuke folks glommed onto and haven’t let go.

There is now a major conflict about the health effects of Chernobyl. The professional health scientists have reached the conclusion after much research and collection of data, that the impact on the civilian population was fairly small. But, the anti-nuclear activists continue to insist that it was much greater. Actually, current scientific thinking is that low doses of radiation do no harm. We are exposed to low doses every day and our bodies have learned to deal with them.

Very clearly stated, Dr. Kemm. Other prominent debunkers of the nuclear scare story include Dr. Richard A Muller of BEST, George Monbiot the green activist, and definitely not least Dr. James Lovelock, proposer of the Gaia Hypothesis.

dont know if I fully believe the slide show, I do remember watching a nature show about the crittors around chenobyle, my question was why is it safe enough for animals but not for people? unless the fear of radiation is being used to push people out of targetted areas (such as agenda 21 stuff I remember seeing a show about an island that was used in the past for nuclear testing and the animals were there, the plants were growing like normal and fish in the sea, if it is safe enough for animals why not for people? unless the fear of radiation is ued to keep people off the island? plants do absorb radiation, seen an article about using sunflowers to absorb it then burying the plants, so who to believe?

You might want to do some reading on this subject. For example, read about the long term effects of extreme exposure such as Hiroshima etc and it’ll become clear that the hysterical reactions to Fukushima and even Chernobyl were and are unjustified.

I don’t know who ‘we’ is or from where ‘death clouds’ comes.
Radiation Effects Research Foundation. Retrieved Sept. 18, 2007. “total number of deaths is not known precisely … acute (within two to four months) deaths … Hiroshima … 90,000－166,000 … Nagasaki … 60,000－80,000”
Many more suffered long term disability, illness and death later.

and a lot died, a lot have dramatic genetic malformations… nuclear does not have a 100% kill rate, however, where the population once had 80 to 90% healthy children, post-Chernobyl it dropped to 20% and then to ZERO.

Animals die, cannot reproduce or when they do, their offspring are not viable. A vacuum exists and other animals drift into and fill up the area, but then they also get sick and become diseased, ill and/or die. THAT is what occurred… you’d have to actually read the book cited… or at least the section on fauna to get that.

“A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry points out that the book achieves its figure by the remarkable method of assuming that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation – were caused by the accident. There is no basis for this assumption, not least because screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and, since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence
of disease.”

I do not agree with that review. You go ahead and believe the propaganda that denies over 5,000 studies by hundreds of scientists. Ignore decades of research, including by Nobel prize winners, like Herman Joseph Muller, specifically for demonstrating how lethal radiation is. The research is solid. It was first published in Russian, and so well received, scientists urged that it also be published in English.

“I do not agree with that review”
Is that because it contradicts your preconceptions?

Sound science is not “propaganda”.

“Ignore decades of research”
No-one is ignoring research. By all means if you want to cite some research (preferably in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or published by a reputable scientific body) then please do so.

“It was first published in Russian, and so well received, scientists urged that it also be published in English.”

It was shown to be deeply flawed, as detailed in this paper in the journal _Radiation Protection Dosimetry_:

Today Dr. James Conca published a good synopsis of the scientific consensus:
– 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths
– 28 early fatalities from radiation within 4 months,
– 19 late adult fatalities from radiation over the next 20 years, and
– 9 late child fatalities from radiation resulting in thyroid cancer.

Scientific finding, including by the BEIR committee. LNT model accepted after decades of discourse between scientists.

Kerala is a prime example of damage to the population by continual low level radiation exposure. “There is an area in Kerala in India, where there is naturally occuring thorium monozite sand, a kind of black sand. There are 44,000 people living there, many for generations. Over the last two years we have collected information on illness among the families living on this radioactive sand compared with families living on natural sand in the same area.

What we found on the radioactive soil was four times the expected level of Down’s Syndrome or mongoloid children. Also mental retardation, epilepsy, congenital blindness and deafness, cleft lip and cleft palate, skeletal abnormalities and childless couples.” Sister Dr. Rosalie Bertell

Aaron, not sure if you’ve ever heard of this female crank Rosalie Bertell, she is the kind of person who believes that we are being sprayed by unknown entities for unknown reasons using unknown aircraft, spraying chemtrails, I kid you not.

Maybe our funny correspondent also believes in the chemtrail fantasy, who knows?

Multiple scientists, academics… discussed it at length … twenty years debating, testing, analyzing… among including the BEIR VII committee supported by DOE, NRC, EPA… I feel very confident in their acceptance of the LNT model. It’s accurate. and honestly, after 3 weeks, I’m done her.
Thank you for the conversation – Good day!

“it’s a plea” No. It uses numerous lines of –evidence– to reject the LNT. You can choose to ignore that evidence if you wish. But that does not stop it from existing.

And that evidence led the 6,000-member Health Physics Society, the principal organization for radiation protection scientists, issued a position paper stating: “Below 10 rad…risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are nonexistent.”

it’s a plea to reject the scientific conclusion of LNT applied to radiation causing cancer. That was long accepted cause-effect, even before BEIR VII also accepted LNT model. One paper will not undue decades of scientific conclusions of direct relationship.

“it’s a plea to reject the scientific conclusion” Once agin: it is not a “plea”. It cites a plethora of evidence for rejecting the LNT.

“That was long accepted cause-effect,” No, it was a regulatory assumption.

“One paper” Once again: there are MANY papers. And furthermore, there are FEW papers that lend credence to the LNT. That’s why the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements stated that “Few experimental studies and essentially no human data can be said to prove or even provide direct support for the [LNT] concept”.

Reference: National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Principles and application of collective dose to
radiation protection. NCRP Publication 121. Bethesda, Md.; 1995.

LNT-based radiophobia fuels needless evacuations, inspires avoidance of life-saving medical procedures, and promotes nuclear fear. Considerations of the basic sciences of biology, physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences should be either the source or the final arbiter of scientific hypotheses about ionizing radiation, and not sterile epidemiological studies, designed to yield mathematically convenient relationships, that ignore the manifold findings of those basic sciences and rest their conclusions on circular reasoning. Failure to take proven biological reality into account leads to counterproductive statistical exercises, sometimes fraught with numerous errors, that carry the misleading appearance of erudition through mathematical complexity. These studies are not benign; they do not err on the safe side; and they have deadly consequences.

Appeals to authority are not particularly of interest to me. But if you like appeals to Authority, then consider:

Marcus CS (2015) Time to Reject the Linear-No Threshold Hypothesis and Accept Thresholds and
Hormesis: A Petition to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Clin. Nucl. Med.40(7):617-9. doi: 10.1097/RLU.0000000000000835.
Abstract

On February 9, 2015, I submitted a petition to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reject the linear-no threshold (LNT) hypothesis and ALARA as the bases for radiation safety regulation in the United States, using instead threshold and hormesis evidence. In this article, I
will briefly review the history of LNT and its use by regulators, the lack of evidence supporting LNT, and the large body of evidence supporting thresholds and hormesis. Physician acceptance of cancer risk from low dose radiation based upon federal regulatory claims is unfortunate and needs to be reevaluated. This is dangerous to patients and impedes good medical care. A link to my petition is available:http://radiationeffects.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hormesis-Petition-to-NRC-02-09-15.pdf,
and support by individual physicians once the public comment period begins would be extremely important.

Herman Joseph Muller 1946 Nobel prize for paper written in 1926 and published 1927 — exposure to radiation damages genetic stability, shows up in future generations, destroys cell lines, accelerating extinction.
You’re the nonsense winner for denying actual science, proven again and again.
John F Kennedy 1963 also spoke about the genetic mutations, cancers that will also come because radioactive fallout arrives on all sides.

“BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a “linear-no-threshold” (LNT) risk model—that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”
[altho they do limit analysis to cancers and only for a limited time, it still shows a correlation — long-term future generations are showing greater genetic mutations]http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/beir_vii_final.pdf

These kinds of ridiculous statements costs people their health and lives! It was proved in 1927 by Mueller (who won a Nobel prize) that even the smallest exposure, like one xray, damages DNA! The government has always known that nuclear promotion has been solely for military purposes under the guise of nuclear security… thus the IAEA agreement that overrides all WHO work for public health – but not regarding the nuclear issue.

It’s long past time that the nuclear industry is recognized for what it is – a military program that was legitimized to keep the health consequences under wraps without informing the public.

DNA damage happens all the time. Even your DNA contains natural radioactive isotopes which cause several mutations every day due to splitting of atoms in the strand itself. However, your body has defenses against that: mutations are mostly happening in inactive segments of DNA so they don’t really matter, DNA repair mechanisms fix the errors, and cells are killing themselves when the mutations are too severe.

There are theories that DNA repair mechanisms becomes more active when there’s more damage occurring. That assumption seems logical because people living on areas with higher natural background radiation do not seem to suffer more of radiation linked diseases and neither is their life expectancy shorter than of those living on areas with lower radiation.

So, doubling a dose does not necessarily double your risks of developing e.g. cancer, at least if doses are low enough. Making radiation 200 times stronger may elevate the probability of some disease a little bit but it does not mean that the area would be uninhabitable or food produced on that area should not be consumed at all.

Making other healthy choices in the life are probably many times more effective than avoiding slightly elevated radiation levels at all cost. For example, the x-ray you mentioned, might reveal a tumor in your body – in which case a controlled dose of radiation has certainly done only good for you.

True, that! Marushka might want to research “the J-curve”, which kind of addresses that issue. If damage is VERY low, the body’s defenses can’t detect it and can’t repair the damage. If the damage is very HIGH, it overwhelms the body’s defenses and it loses the battle.
But there IS a middle ground where the body’s defenses CAN detect AND overcome damage and/or invasions and repair itself quite successfully.
And radiation damage is one of those kinds of things, too.

Um, actually the real curve goes the other direct: low doses not only have no deleterious effect, they appear to be somewhat beneficial. That may account why we in nicely radioactive Colorado have a low cancer rate.

MRI has nothing to do with anything yes i know the R is not radiation in MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging It is not a kneejerk reaction I have serious concerns about what has gone on at Fukushima like thousands of others, and calling everyone with the same concerns fearmongerers makes you look less credible, there are many people worried and rightfully so because you know damn well the effects of what can happen when something goes wrong with nuclear. There is a mass media cover up on this event and i think you know that. I am tired of the whitewashing from PR firms in this industry trying to keep the public in the dark so they can keep collecting their billions and continue polluting the earth. Bioaccumulation is real

Well yes, the R stands for resonance, but another name for MRI is NMRI or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. So you would favour MRI vs CAT scans because one uses radiation, while the other not? Can you not see that radiation is used to save lives, not to harm them?

Yes, I do know damn well the effects of what can happen when something goes wrong with nuclear, such as in Fukushima, where *ZERO* people died of radiation, and most likely *ZERO* people will die in the future, given the very low level of radiation escaped from the damaged plant. These figures have been not given by TEPCO, but by the WHO.

No, there is no mass media cover up on Fukushima. There just are no interesting news for the non-nuclear geeks, because it’s all very boring these days.

the kinds of radiation we evolved with, died down enough for 1.) our bodies to repair what we evolved with 2.) died down enough for our own and other species to exist long enough to pro-create.

But this vast amount of lethal, man-made radionuclides are all new to our biology and those of many other species, we have very little ability to recover from exposure. Acute exposure kills us or it doesn’t. Likely will vaporize or burn… and we’ve learned that low dose exposure is profoundly hazardous genetically and hazardous as it promotes the Dysfunction systemically – entire biological systems collapse.

Linear Non Threshold There is always risk, there is no threshold without risk. There is an absence of linear relationship, so to speak. An Acute dose may kill you within hours or weeks. A chronic, low-dose exposure would kill millions over time — maybe half in 10 years and the remainder over an additional 40 years. In Japan, just cancers alone are being estimated to reach 1 million – easily. Doesn’t include all the myriad ways damage and death can also occur – miscarriages, stillbirths, spontaneous heart attacks (one the increase, especially under age 19), cardiovascular disease (incloudes nose bleeds to aneurysms, brain and nervous system disorders, diabetes,… too long a list for me to easily remember off the top of my head.

Unfortunately for the paranoid, staying inside could expose them to even more radiation from radon gas etc. The good thing is our species, and all species for that matter, evolved in a bath of radiation and thus are very tolerant of it. Perhaps there is a good reason that while we respond to excess heat or cold etc, we have no sensory responise to radiation?

No, the military promoted it – specifically, Admiral Rickover – to try to get it to reform power generation as a whole, as it is the safest and cleanest option. You want to talk about radiation damage? Don’t ever fly in a plane.
You want to talk about spreading radioactive contamination? Don’t live near a Coal Plant.

You want to talk about Nuclear Power? Educate yourself with reasonable sources written by reasonable people.
Not assumptions or lack of context, which is precisely what you’re doing.
You’ve got Google. Use it properly.

Nuclear power is the cleanest and safest form of energy? Sorry to disappoint, but free point energy from the quantum flux field has far more energy than nuclear and doesn’t leave any footprint. Seems like you like to make blanket statements. That’s cool tho…a lot of that is going around these days.

So tell me something Mr. Pro-science, pro-nuclear power, libertarian Bertagnolio. What are your doing with waste from these plants.. Your taking a shit with no proper way to dispose of it. But i guess you can bury it right? Out of sight, Out of mind let the future generations deal with our problems.

No, it doesn’t, because right now harnessing it requires vast amounts of energy much of which come from Coal. Even then, the best we can get out of Zero Point Energy devises is enough to power… well, nothing, really.
So, actually, to correct your statement, Fusion is, as one company has managed to get Fusion to produce more energy than it consumes. Now, it’s not economically feasible.

When it’s viable and produces more energy than it consumes to get the process going, yes, zero-point energy will probably be the best energy source we can get.

However, I didn’t think I needed to make the statement “currently viable,” in my comment. I figured everyone would realize that I’m not going to waste everyone’s time with half-thought-out semantics, but that’s cool, though, I guess that’s going around these days.

The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today’s technology, in 20-40 years, says Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson

A new study – co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi – analyzing what is needed to convert the world’s energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today’s technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy.
WWS = Wind, Water, Solar (NO Nuclear, No Oil) Change the infrastructure, long-term changes = much lower costs, truly clean atmosphere and far better for life… we will still have to deal with the legacy of contamination from nuclear, petrochemicals… but at least we can stop the damage.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCYlCF3QuQ

Part of that is because of how much training is involved and how careful nuclear operators have to be.

The other great part about nuclear is how much industry and intellectualism it drives in just simply manning them. It’s a great white-collar and blue-collar work force, and it’s incredibly cost-effective and only getting better. (They’re expensive to build, but after that incredibly cheap and pay themselves off quickly)

Wind is actually one of the least economical methods and is only good on small-scales. Large scales actually do a number to the environment.

Water, agreed, but that requires far more development – and that requires money.
Solar? Yeah, solar is great.
But so is nuclear power.

Particularly newer ones. I agree, a lot of the old ones need to be shut down. Not all of those are safe… but there is no reason to not include Fission Power from Clean Energy of the Future ideas. Especially if you use Thorium. I’d LOVE to see you come up with an argument against Thorium reactors. That’d be interesting… considering I don’t think there really is one.

Mark Z. Jacobsen is not exactly honest. He considers the carbon cost of a burning city to be built into the carbon cost of nuclear energy – this fallacy being the only way he could even justify his work.

Dr. H.J. Muller did not know about DNA 1927. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946. It was for “the discovery of the production of mutations by means of X-ray irradiation” (Nobel Prize). “one X-ray” is pretty hard to find, Dr. Muller never stated (nor proved) that “one X-ray” causes mutation.

Discovery of X-ray mutagenesis[edit]
1926 marked the beginning of a series of major breakthroughs. Beginning in November, Muller carried out two experiments with varied doses of X-rays, the second of which used the crossing over suppressor stock (“ClB”) he had found in 1919. A clear, quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations quickly emerged. Muller’s discovery created a media sensation after he delivered a paper entitled “The Problem of Genetic Modification” at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin; it would make him one of the better known public intellectuals of the early 20th century. By 1928, others had replicated his dramatic results, expanding them to other model organisms such as wasps and maize. In the following years, he began publicizing the likely dangers of radiation exposure in humans

Artifical Transmutation of the Gene
[as in man-made, the Xray]
‘regarding the types… the lethals greatly outnumbered the non-lethals (recessive for the lethal effect…) … producing a visible morphological abnormality. There were some ‘semi-lethals’… these were not nearly so numerous as the lethals.
… obtain evidence in these experiments for the first time, of the occurrence of dominant of dominant, lethal genetic changes, both in the X and other chromonsones.
effects on the sex ratio
‘partial’ sterility in males
subsequent generation, sterility
changes produced by Xray, rearrangement of the order of genes, (without which would occur at much greater rarity). which we believe furnish the building blocks of evolution.”http://www.esp.org/foundations/genetics/classical/holdings/m/hjm-1927a.pdf

“A gene mutation is a permanent change in the DNA sequence that makes up a gene. Mutations range in size from a single DNA building block (DNA base) to a large segment of a chromosome.”

OK, Marushka, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you believe pretty much every fear-inducing report you read and in addition, NO amount of data, information OR knowledge, supplied by ANYONE, will change your mind.
So this alleged “conversation” will go nowhere at all, no matter how many posts you make or how many people reply to your posts.
I’ve found that to be pretty common in several blogsites. I first noticed it at current.com in the early days, when if you were anything but a devout liberal Gore-lover, your comments were derided and you were attacked ad hominum in post after post.
Lately, I’ve also bailed on one of the Linked In White House groups for the same reason. There could be tens of thousands of posts in one thread over a year or two, and pretty much “to a man” (and including many women, too), nobody’s mind has been changed, nor has anyone’s posts changed anyone else’s mind.
So, have fun, carry on, blog away, but I, for one, will not play your game. There is nothing I can write, nor is there ANY link or quote or data that I could possibly produce which would move you off your position.
Enjoy! Cheers! Ciao!

In 1962 the AEC told president Kennedy the Thorium Molten Salt ReCtor was the technology for civilian energy, as it couldn’t melt down, blow up and was walk away safe. It was useable of weapons and was shelved. China is on a crash program developing the Th-MSR developed in the 1960s at ORNL. NRC and DOE need to allow MSR development. energyfromthorium.com

so many opinions I do not know what to believe, these people have a incentive to under state the threats of nuclear energy because they do not get any revenue from oil and gas and have the rights to the technology but no way to make any money. oil and gas people have an incentive to lie, the gov has incentive to lie about global warming, terrorism, wars, obamacare blowing the threats and risks and costs over board to get what they want. all these people have strong incentives to lie for or against something, so who to believe?

I have spent the last 5 years assembling a massive interactive PowerPoint slide show on that most contentious of subjects – climate change. Although it’s addressing an Australian audience, nevertheless it’s fundamentally international. There’s quite lot of information on power generation, including nuclear, as well as some interesting information about a new product which would seem to be a ‘magic bullet’ to deal with many types of pollution, including radionuclides.

An aspect of the situation that Kemm doesn’t go into is the economics, from a government’s point of view, of a choice between nuclear fuel and fossil. The world ocean contains 300,000 fukushimas’ worth of uranium, and Japan has demonstrated its extraction at a cost that, at scale, is projected to be $0.60/MMBTU.

This means it cannot compete with uranium mines on land, which are still profitable with uranium prices now at something like $0.18/MMBTU.

But it is *very* competitive — very competitive indeed — with the import of natural *gas*, for which Japan has been paying $16/MMBTU (and natural gas prices are commonly discussed in terms of the otherwise obsolete MMBTU energy unit, which is the energy taken up by a million pounds of water when its temperature rises by 1°F).

But what if the Japanese government takes an eighth of the natural gas price as an import duty, or an excise tax, or a royalty, or a throngor? (A tax is a tax. There are various names. “Throngor” I made up, but maybe it’s real.) The US government takes, if I recall, three-sixteenths (used to take just an eighth).

If it takes that typical rate, then the shutdown of its citizens’ nuclear power industry has given it a $500-million-per-month windfall.

Now, Japan has some sad experience with natural gas. In the 70s there was whole Tokyo department store that was lifted by a gas explosion and then collapsed into its basement, killing dozens of people, and during the great Tohoku earthquake several huge, deadly natural gas or LPG blasts and fires occurred.

But $2/MMBTU, $500 million a month …

“No doubt the Japanese government is too scared to release this water into
the sea because of the howl of criticism which would no doubt follow” — no doubt it would follow, and no doubt many of the howlers would be on government payrolls, and would howl without the slightest fear for their careers. Indeed, it might be worse for them if they kept silent.

How would you define zero damage. I would say that zero damage would mean that the following statement is true:

“There is ZERO contamination of surrounding countryside, farms, property by radioactive substances from the plant. ZERO additional radiation above the background radiation is present. ZERO non-natural nucleotides from the fukushima plant are present in the area.”

If this is true, then there is no problem with moving everyone back home, planting and harvesting the farms, and returning to normal life, correct?

So, is the above statement true? Or would you need to qualify it? What qualifications would you use?

Yup.
Because Japan (understandably so) freaks out more than even you do over such things.
It was a faux paux BEFORE Fukushima to even say “Reactor” or “Nuclear” in Japan. We were specifically instructed not to talk about it at Indoc due to fears about it by the Japanese people. Us nuclear operators were suggested to lie about what our jobs were or just say “I work on the engines (often true, as some of us do work on the engines),” simply to avoid awkward scenarios or hatred.
No, we were not lying about the presence of two nuclear reactors along Tokyo Bay.

there can NEVER be zero radiation at ground level there…….your expectation is FALSE and ignores what is being told here, radiation is all around YOU every day………the POINT made was NO dangerous levels of radiations exist on the land around fukashima…..but again there and everywhere else radiation is found.

ENENews is iffy and apparently biased. A honest news website should tell you who and where the publisher is. No, they refuse to provide such information. Remember: anyone can create a website these days with some money and time, and no one can stop you from posting anything on your website.

Its not so much that he is educated/experienced, but when scientists in any field are backed by an organization that has an agenda, you have to take it with a grain of salt. People love to quote only the small amounts of science that backs their ideas and such being skeptical is the best thing you can be in science.

Yes, working in an industry can bias a person on matters involving said industry; but the author is stating well-known information about radiation. If you don’t believe him, look up the facts about ionizing radiation. Learning about radiation and nuclear power is not as easy as simply dismissing Kemm’s article because he works in the nuclear industry, but it is much more gratifying.

Just like Three Mile Island, no one died, no one was hurt (other than financially) and all it proved was the inherent safety of nuclear power. Consider all the casualties of all other sources of energy.

Recent studies show Tuna spawned near Fukushima is also only a danger because of mercury. It would take 100kg of Fukushima tuna to equal the same levels of radiation as one banana.
Of the water that is due to reach the California Coast in the next few years, you’d have to drink your yearly amount of water just to get the same amount of contamination from Fukushima as you would a single banana.

You ought to try educating yourself sometime.
Coal is irradiating the world TEN THOUSAND times more than Fukushima, but you don’t hear anyone complaining about that. You get more radiation from coal than you do from nuclear power. Three times as much when living within 50 miles of one, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t factor in the curvature of the earth – which makes a difference for nuclear power, cutting it to nill (it’s already virtually nothing at all, less than if you ate a single banana, versus living next to one for a year), whereas it doesn’t hurt Coal’s irradiation factor at all.
Note how each of the reactors that has melted down was old; designed in the ’50s. Comparing them to new ones would be like comparing the old room-sized computers of the ’50s to the massive server-farms we have now and expecting the same computing power.
New ones, particularly Thorium, are remarkably safe.

So, yeah, I do listen to myself. You might try listening to me, too.
You want a lower nuclear footprint? Then go nuclear and cut coal. You’ll irradiate everyone less. Go figure. One spews carbon dioxide, mercury, and uranium during regular operation, the other emits water vapor.
Education. Get some. It’ll help you keep from using ridiculous assumptions.

What is this fascination you seem to have for bananas?
I don’t feel the need to “educate myself”. I might end up like you. There are enough people like you around; educated beyond their intelligence and lecturing to mankind from their “divine source” of information. You or any boffin like you cannot convince me that utilizing high tech science to boil water is at the apex of power generation science. You’re so full of yourself that you can’t see how ludicrous that idea is. I also know that coal isn’t a good idea either. I don’t use it. I don’t advocate it. Energy generation is about money and politics; not necessarily about need and certainly not about intelligence.
Get over yourself Einstein.

What is this world coming to when people actually value stupidity?
If you can’t be convinced by logic and fact, very well. Good luck having success. Or advancing the human race.
You’ll be happy to know, if you’ve read any of my other comments, that my “Divine Source,” is myself. I’m a qualified Reactor Operator. I’ve seen the math at play, I know the science. I was in Japan during The Great Earthquake of ’11 – and still remain in Japan today – and was ever so very fortunate to take surveys in the Tokyo Area. Needless to say, I know what I’m talking about, not from a “Divine Source.” We calibrated our own equipment. I saw my results of internal dose, saw the results of what was actually present, and what is present today.
‘
Also, the notion that there is one singular “Divine Source,” is humorous, especially since I’ve been a part of truthful fact generation and dispersion of information.

Why bananas? Because you don’t freak out over them. Many recommend eating them pretty much daily. Yet, they do more to you than even a nuclear meltdown will, unless you’re in the exclusion area. They also have wonderful comparisons that make the Anti-Nuclear argument look very silly.
For instance, if you’re worried about dose, you could eat 20kg(44 pounds) of Tuna that spawned near Fukushima, or you could get a similar dose from one banana.
Likewise, you’d get 1 BED (Banana Equivalent Dose, not a common measurement, because it’s so small and has so little applications except to give people perspective on nuclear power) if you were to have your entire water-consumption come from unfiltered Pacific Water – for an entire year and a half. 1 Cubic Meter. 260-something gallons.
Brazil nuts are actually one of the “worst,” foods for you when it comes to radiation dose received. Far worse than bananas.
So why bananas? Because they’re so very fun to disprove you with. They point out that your argument is, well, bananas.

You will most likely go through your life thinking that education equals intelligence. Have fun with that.

I’m not going to get you to see my viewpoint, and you won’t get me to see yours. That’s really not important anyway.

If nothing else comes from this affair I sincerely pray that the world community learns not to build nuclear power plants on major earthquake faults in future.

I don’t want to continue with the back and forth gamesmanship. I’ve had enough through the years. I want to enjoy what is left of my life without getting into a contest of wills with anybody. It takes too much of my energy.

I have come to a few conclusions in the last day or so about what is most important to me.

Whatever your reality is, make the most of it.

Good luck to you and anybody else who might be reading this thread in your future(s).

Considering I don’t even have a degree myself, merely qualifications (that, admittedly going back against my own argument, some colleges will accept as a degree should I go about taking some GenEds), I find your claim that I assume “education = intelligence,” laughable. The two often go hand in hand, as education is one of the easiest ways to exercise the brain.

I do love it when people who know nothing about an issue try to argue with those who do.
I might as well go advise some surgeons on how to remove cancer, or go tell my airline pilot how to fly a plane the next time I travel.

Thorium nuclear reactors and fusion reactors being worked on now are much more likely to solve that problem than solar and/or wind.
The Stanford guy left out one item… economic and social feasibility. NIMBY is already keeping a LOT of wind farms from being built, even if the financial risks are largely borne by willing investors. Let alone conservationists concerned with desert creatures being disturbed by the construction and shade provided by solar panels en masse.
And I’ve often wondered about wind and tidal and hydrothermal generators positioned off the US’ east coast… sucking all that energy out of the wind and water and moving it as electricity to the hungry denizens of the US… with less kinetic and thermal energy left, would that seriously affect the Gulf Stream’s ability to bring warm waters and temperate climatic conditions to… say… the UK?
If the effects are negative, can the UK sue the US for warmer weather?
Nobody thinks about unintended consequences of their “dream solutions” any more… so sad.

Thank you, Marushka… I just had fun clicking that link and delving a bit deeper under the covers…

Try their “about” link and see what the description of “their work” amounts to… publishing stuff for people to read… and LOTS of page views per month to show how great they are.

THEN, go to http://whois.domaintools.com/enenews.com and read ABOUT their habit of changing servers multiple times, registering as “PRIVATE REGISTRANT” (wonder if that’s what their birth certificate says…) and some more data about which metropolis in UTAH they currently reside in.
Or are YOU the “private registrant,” just trying to build stats for page views from innocents like us? LOL… sorry, but LOL.

It’s up to about 2% now after huge costs and all it does is produce very very expensive power that it completely unreliable, thus requiring 100% backup of a dependable source such as coal or gas. Only the elites can afford such foolishness as the poor really are sufferring from the high power rates to the extent that some are freezing to death in winter in both Germany and UK. Industry that requires significant amounts of power are leaving such jurisdictions in droves. Withness this in Germany, Spain, Ontario, etc. Now those same elites want to use the influence of the UN to force the poor of Africa to suffer from lack of reliable power. If their objective is truly evil and they want to keep them perpetually poor, there is no better way to do it.
The whole thing reminds me of the infamous statement, “let them eat cake”.

It kind of went right over C.W.’s head so calling him a “smart” ass probably is wrong. I was thinking of the viable alternative sources that you refer to as wind and solar are not viable. Wind farms are sure decimating birds though. I first saw this near Bakersfield CA long ago and have seen the ravages of them at all the ones i have toured. We now find that the damage isn’t limited to birds with bats being killed by the billions too. In regard to nuclear power generation, I can’t think of a single industry with the stellar safety record it has.

There is plenty. Thousands of workers are killed installing solar and wind farms (which is more complicated than and requires more climbing than building nuclear power plants). Solar cell production also uses a lot of poisonous chemicals. Hydro killed six people at the same earthquake where Fukushima killed none.

Looks like most of us here who know about nuclear are clueless, then. The official death toll related to nuclear radiation is *ZERO*. Zilch. Zippo.

Day 1 of what, if I can? Day 1 of the tsunami, maybe, when there had been no explosions yet? Or day 1 when a modest release of some radionucleids happened?

It would help if you could provide a link to such NRC document, you know. Your claims have *ZERO* validity if you cannot provide a document for us to read. Not 10 documents, not 100 documents. Only one. It should not be hard for you to provide us with such document, right?

day one 311. earthquake, tsunami, kapow, explosions within hours of loss of power
70 GE employees happened to be there and 40 gave aid they received enough radiation to be whisked away ASAP thru state dept channels
pg 162 begins with McDermott… one little nugget…
pg 163… “We understand that out of the 40 people,

another source “pg231 there were about 70 GE staff there and they were exiting the sitewhen the tsunami hit… accounted for all staff but their housing
collapsed. using microwave phones to communicate.

Corporations used simulators but real time data was not possible because of evacuation
it appears that because the plants in Japan
were not below ground
they sustained damage that caused them to
leak and that’s why they ended up – and loss of power – that’s why they blew” http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A099.pdf

UNIT 1 “CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.
20 MR. DORMAN: We have not gotten any direct
21 reporting. We’re just — we’re still working off of
22 what we got on the media, but it is a very disturbing
23 image.
24 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: What would you — how
25 would you characterize that? What does it mean?
PAGE 331 MR. DORMAN: Well, what we’re inferring
2 from that image is that it’s
a catastrophic failure of
3 the primary containment.” full nuclear meltdown

page 131
5 When the explosion took place, we
6 understand that the dose rate at the site boundary
7 increased to 100 MR per hour, and then shortly after
8 that, it dropped to 7 MR per hour.

23 MR. WEBER: We heard that helos making
24ferry runs back and forth from the Ronald Reagan
25came back and were discovered to be contaminated.
page 82
1They were in the vicinity of the Fukushima reactors
2and personnel on those helos also were contaminated,
8are addressing that piece of it, but also the — one
9of the helicopters had landed on the Japanese
10command ship and people — the people who stepped on
11the decks of that command ship came back with some
12elevated counts on their feet and clothing.
[Redacted
Page 83
24MR. GUNN: Admiral Donald?
25ADMIRAL DONALD: Yes, Admiral Donald.
PAGE 84
MR.GUNN: Hi, yes sir. I have Mr.Ponemanon the phone.
ADMIRAL DONALD: Okay.
MR.GUNN: All right gentlemen. You all are now connected.

Earlierthis evening, as the USS RonaldReagan
was operating off the coast of Japan, we —
theship just arrived. We had given the ship some
guidanceas far as positioning was concerned to stay
clear of the area of the potential plume, basically
told her to stay 50 miles outside of the radius of
the – 100 miles — excuse me — 50 miles radius
outside of the plant — damaged plant — potentially
damaged plant, and then 100 miles along the plume
with a vector of 45 degrees.
The ship was adhering to that
[redacted]
Page 85
1requirement and detected some activity about two and
2a half times above normal airborne activity using
3 on-board sensors on the aircraft carriers.
4So that indicated that they had found
5the plume and it was probably more significant than
what we had originally thought.
7The second thing — the second thing
8that has happened is we have had some helicopters
conducting operations from the aircraft carrier and
10one of the helicopters came back from having stopped
11on board the Japanese command ship in the area, and
12people who had been on — were on the helicopter who
13had walked on the deck of the ship, were monitored
14and had elevated counts on their feet, 2500 counts
15per minute.
MR. PONEMAN: Yes, 5,000 dpm.
[redacted]

I cannot find any single reference to lethal doses in the two PDF files that you have linked in your message. The only time I see “lethal” in your message is when you refer to the article on enformable, not to any FOIA NRC document. So you have copied something, but not from any FOIA NRC document, as far as I can see. And quite frankly, I don’t really need to care about NRC documents, as they were directed by a political puppet, and not by a person who should be versed in technology. No wonder Jazcko was removed from the NRC top role a while ago, thankfully.

There have been *ZERO* deaths from Fukushima Dai-ichi due to radiation, exactly *ZERO* deaths. No more, no less than *ZERO* deaths. This is a fact that is well understood and clear for everyone who has enough knowledge of what exactly happened at Fukushima Dai-ichi.

Would you live in an area that has been contaminated by a nuclear accident such as Chernobyl or the Fukushima prefect? Would you live there if your wife was pregnant or your children were young and playing outside in the backyard everyday? Would you eat produce or meat that has been grown or raised in a highly contaminated area? I don’t think anyone has the right to say that nuclear power is safe until they’ve lived in these contaminated conditions for 25-30 years, maybe even longer. Until you’ve raised your kids in a toxic environment and personally witnessed what really happens. It’s easy to say that nuclear power is safe when you live in a part of the world that has never been affected by a nuclear accident. But I’m pretty sure that the people living in Chernobyl and surrounding areas would have a different opinion about nuclear energy. Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and yet look at what’s happened to the Fukushima prefect. With nuclear energy comes the risk of nuclear accidents, releasing radioactive materials and contaminating the only world we live and raise our children in. As a wife, mother and a human being I ask but one simple question- why use such a dangerous and poisonous method to simply boil water to make steam to run the turbines thus making electricity? Is it really worth it?

I didn’t ask if you were willing to live close to a currently operating or even a safely decommissioned nuclear power plant. I asked you if you would live with your family in an area that had been highly contaminated by a nuclear accident? Your children playing outside, eating food grown locally and spending the bulk of your time living and working within an area of high contamination? Would you continue to reside at your current address if the nuclear plant five miles away experienced an accident similar to Chernobyl or Fukushima? Here in Ontario, Canada- nuclear energy provides very little of the overall percentage of power consumed by the province ( I believe it’s approximately 15%). For such a small slice of the pie, it doesn’t seem worth the potential risk to Canadians. No one can predict the future and as such can never state with certainty that a nuclear accident is not possible here and will never happen. Unfortunately when these accidents do happen they contaminate the land, air and water that we as humans depend on and are ultimately connected to. I live close to 3 different nuclear power stations, one of which is the largest in the world boasting 8 functioning reactors. I would hate to see this beautiful, beneficial part of Ontario, Canada be contaminated and rendered uninhabitable for hundreds of years for a 15% slice of the overall provincial energy pie. When nuclear tragedies happen the consequences are devastating and long lived- nuclear power is simply not worth the risk.

What area has been “highly contaminated”? Yes, I would live in the evacuated areas in and around Fukushima, yes, I would even live in Denver, which has much higher radiation levels! Radiophobia is scary and not very healthy. Don’t be taken in by the fear mongers!

Thanks for the info on nuclear power providing more than 50% of ontario’s total power consumption, I’m going to look into that further. I’m new to this and have only been researching nuclear history for a short time. From what I’ve seen and read so far, Japan has only officially sanctioned off 20-30 kilometres surrounding Fukushima daiichi as a “no go zone”. Obviously, this area is considered completely uninhabitable for people for many years to come. But I’ve also seen some really high readings of cescium, iodine and other various radioactive materials in the soil as far away as 400 kilometres from the plant. Although the media will inevitably focus on hot spots in an effort to stoke fear amongst the public, some credit should be given to these readings. No one knows for sure exactly how much radiation was released during the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns of 2011 and no one ever will. But I don’t think 30 kilometres is a safe and acceptable distance for the Japanese people living in the affected areas. The affects of long term radiation exposure even at low amounts is known to increase your risk for cancer. The people surrounding Chernobyl have been living with the affects of constant exposure to what their government would consider acceptable levels of radiation for 30 years now. There’s a lot of children and young people suffering with various types of cancer and heart conditions that are known to be caused by radiation. Just because the negative and sometimes fatal effects don’t show up for 10-30- maybe even 50 years after the event doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Highly contaminated is when living somewhere long term will most likely make you sick or cause death.

I would guess your idea of highly contaminated is different than mine. I would live within 10 kilometers of the Fukushima plant without a problem. There are many people who earn their living from the fear they can generate, there have not been any significant increase in cancer and according to the experts, none is expected. For good (accurate) updated information about Fukushima, without the hype, I recommend http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates.htmlhttp://jciv.iidj.net/map/

For background, I have been a qualified radiation worker for over 35 years. I am not paid to comment, my motivation for being pro-nuclear is a strong desire for a cleaner, better future and a strong distaste for all the fear mongering misconceptions which are promoted way too often. I am an I&C technician and could work in almost any industry, but I choose to work in the nuclear power industry because it’s safer, cleaner and rewarding.

Saying there are “high readings” is meaningless unless also you know that those represent some sort of health threat. There is no such support for the levels discovered. Any time you see a big number, don’t forget to look to see what units it is expressed in, because the SI system allows any reading to be expressed as a big number, by choosing among the “pico”, “nano”, “micro” prefixes.

The stories about suffering children and young people near Chernobyl are bogus fund-raising scams – or, at best, they are deeply misguided campaigns based on someone’s irrational fears. There are no radiation-caused illnesses there among those under 28. Not “few” – “none”.

Hi heather c , I’d like to chime in with a short reply first because you replied to a message of mine from 2 years ago, but most importantly because you did make some good points and asked questions politely, which is not a given when this kind of topic is “discussed”. I’m sure you have seen the tone of many messages on this thread-that-would-not-die already!

You have a very good question in asking about the “contaminated area” which someone still calls a “radioactive wasteland” which will be inhabitable for thousands of years, which is a contradiction in terms as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which *really* received a high dose of radiation and neutrons during the sad WWII atomic blasts, are two perfectly normal cities, and have been for decades already.

So one thing has to be said first: we know radiation, we know how to manage the risk, and we know how things should be handled.

Unfortunately there are also other factors which come into play, like in the case of the Fukushima accident, and when politics and policies come into action, then often they take the wrong kind of action which is more dangerous in the longer term. And often even in the shorter term, like in this case.

You’re wrong when you say that no one knows how much radiation has left the damaged reactors and reach the surroundings. There are people who do this for a living, and the whole evacuation procedure keeps their input very much into account.

I agree with Michael Mann on the fact that the evacuation could have been either much smaller, or even avoided completely, especially in Japan where citizens still hold their government as a trusted source of information, something that we in the Western world cannot say any longer.

I say this because the really dangerous phase of the “contamination” which you describe is really only 3 months long, and life could be kept almost identical, with a few precautions, even during these 3 months, if people would trust and follow the indications provided by the experts in radioprotection.

Why 3 months? Because that’s 10 times the radioactive half-life of iodine-131, one of the nastiest isotopes which is found after an accident. After 3 months there is barely no iodine-131 left in the environment, of course provided that there is no leak any longer, which was the case for Fukushima.

The area surrounding the damaged power plant has been slowly but surely reopened to local inhabitants, and in many cases it is now possible to live 24/7 in areas which were previously sealed off. Of course you don’t read this kind of information because it’s positive news, and positive news don’t help sell advertisement, so the media don’t care.

Finally, on the possibility of people developing cancer after many years, yes, there surely is a possibility, but it is also possible that these people would have developed a cancer even if there would have been NO nuclear accident, so no one can be sure, as it is impossible to trace a root cause precisely in the domain of cancer development.

So yes, there can be an additional risk, and the risk has been quantified, but it’s also been found very small, so much so that even the WHO has confirmed that there are likely no measurable increases in the years to come. Here is a link if you’re interested, it is a little technical but it’s well done:

Please keep asking good questons, all the people who are knowledgeable on the nuclear topics like to answer when there is a sincere interest in the most advanced yet most badly known form to generate vast amount of clean energy in the cheapest possible way.

Hi Luca, thank you for your brief response to my questions about Fukushima. I followed the link you provided which led me to additional links and a wealth of valuable information. You were right about iodine having a very short half life which is definetly a positive for the people of the Fukushima prefecture. But I still have some strong concerns about the caesium. It seems that it has a much longer half life and it appears to find its way into the food chain quickly and easily. From what I read, the Japanese government and the WHO are educating the public about the dangers of eating contaminated food in highly affected areas of Japan. They are also educating people about how to prepare these foods so the contamination risks are minimalized. For many of these people, the land they live on is all they’ve got. They live and possibly work on this land as well as perhaps raise livestock and grow some of their staple foods there. When nuclear contamination like Chernobyl and Fukushima occurs, these poor people don’t have many options. Either stay and risk the long term health of themselves and their families or pack up quickly and relocate to a “safe zone”. For some, this means leaving everything behind for absolutely no fault of their own. The power companies and the government offer virtually no physical or financial assistance yet they are the ones to reap the benefits of what they promote as “safe and affordable energy”. Seems like a pretty good situation for the “tepco’s” of this world with no accountability to the Japanese people or Mother Earth. I have another question for you regarding the sustainability of nuclear power pertaining to nuclear waste. From what I understand, it’s cheap to make nuclear power but extremely expensive to dispose of what’s leftover? So where is all of this nuclear waste going and is there a safe way to really dispose of it besides burying it miles under ground?

@disqus_bGUMPpuCov:disqus once again excellent questions, so I will gladly invest some time to try to address the points you raised.

First, a word on isotopes and radioactivity. For some reason which escapes me, people think that isotopes which have a very long radioactive half-life are quite dangerous, while in fact the opposite is true! It’s the isotopes like iodine-131, with a radioactive half-life of 8 days, which are more dangerous than, say, caesium-137 with a half-life of 30 years. Plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24500 years is barely radioactive, while uranium-238 with its half-life of 4.5 billion years is almost non-radioactive, that is, is almost like a stable non-radioactive element.

So, albeit more atoms of caesium-137 might remain in the environment in case the area is not decontaminated (which is *NOT* the case for the area around the damaged powerplant in Japan), they are much less dangerous than iodine-131.

There is another important concept to know, and it’s that of the biological half-life, which is quite different from the radioactive half-life.

Our body in fact takes in a lot of different elements, but keeps expelling some and replenishing the amount with fresh supply. The biological half-life is the time after which half of the amount of a specific element or isotope has been taken and expelled from the body. Again, 10 times after the biological half-life you can safely say that almost all of the original element or isotope has passed thru the body.

The biological half-life for caesium is 2-3 weeks, and thus the possible exposure to the effects of radiation from having some caesium-137 in the body is much less than what people think, simply because the body gets rapidly rid of the caesium in a very natural way.

Obviously there are different biological half-lives for different elements and different organs in the body, but this is what happens with radioactive caesium.

On the foodstuff grown around the damaged powerplant, the levels of the different isotopes has been measured since very early after the accident, and rice has been found “clean” of any traces of radiation since at least three years, and so have all the other crops grown in the Fukushima area. This is also due to the good effects of the massive decontamination effort performed by the Japanese.

On the help to the evacuees, I am not sure where you are taking the information that TEPCO has not provided any financial aid, because that information is simply not true. TEPCO has provided very large amounts of money to those displaced by the nuclear crisis, though I am not sure if they are still doing it, as there was a maximum time by which the evacuees would receive such dole.

On your final question of what to do with the used nuclear fuel, I believe that right now it is perfectly safe to keep it stored in secured environments like the nuclear power plants, before a good decision on what to do is taken, and I am specifically talking about the US right now.

In France, since 40 years the used nuclear fuel is recycled at a highly sophisticated plant in La Hague, and the “good stuff” is separated by the “nasty stuff” with different processes.

The “nasty stuff” is highly radioactive, but it’s also very very tiny in amount. Presently in France they store sealed canisters of the nasty stuff, in vitrified form, inside of a secure building as big as two basketball courts. Not a very large building, thus. Here, they are storing decades of highly radioactive waste, and they have room for many decades still.

The “good stuff”, like plutonium-239 and uranium-238, is stored or used to produce new nuclear fuel.

This is a very quick answer, and I hope that it gives you more context to better understand the complex yet fascinating physics and technology behind nuclear.

Thanks for the heads up! I believe it’s important to learn about both sides of the issue so that one can make an educated decision regarding Fukushima and nuclear safety in general. I appreciate the feedback that I’ve received so far but no matter what these gentleman say- I don’t feel that nuclear power is safe. Most pro nuclear people leave out or flat out deny the human consequences following an accident like Fukushima or Chernobyl. What good is power for the people if the end result is that following one of these disasters, the land is not fit for people? Thank you for your encouraging reply, all of this keeps me questioning and researching our nuclear past, present and unfortunately our nuclear future…

I have an MSME from Michigan and 11,000 hours experience in nuclear, power, and radiation. Believe me, nuclear is 98% lies, and they know exactly how they are lying. Even the “true believers” still know how they spin things to minimize the appearance of danger and damage.

Frank Energy is one of multiple aliases of a person who owns and operates an anti-nuclear website. I have found no evidence that he has any nuclear experience other than running the NukePro website. I have over 35 years experience as a qualified radiation worker, I post under my real name and allow people to see my profile and all of my previous comments. Some of Frank Energy.’s confirmed aliases are: PacE, SteveO, NukePro, Confirmer, I’m pretty sure there are several others. Fear has been shown to be more dangerous than the levels of radiation released, but fear is what Frank is selling….,

Ah see, the pro nukists do not want people to heave real information, only the lies of the party line.

Mike works for Ginna plant. They were convicted of defrausing the ratepayers and had to pay an amazing $240M fine.

Then just last year, under “tough financial conditions” they manipulated the political process to jack up the amount paid to Ginna, by the ratepayers to “keep Ginna in operation”….the net effect of that increase? $240M

hmmmmmmm, this blatant a level of corruption, while poisoning the nearby areas, is really beyond belief.

Sure explain to me how an Instrument technician in a power plant had something to do with utilities power sales on the wholesale and retail market. It’s like saying I do my banking at Chase Morgan so I had something to do with price fixing dollars and Euros… give me a break. Just what is your point about bringing up old history of a parent company that I didn’t even know about until you brought it up? What does it have to do with the fact that you promote outrageous fear mongering stories and continuously lie to people in hopes of getting them to click on your crappy website, causing fear uncertainty and doubt, which in turn may cause mental and physical injury to those very people you pretend to care about?

So you can’t, I didn’t think you could, I know I had nothing to do with or even knew anything about it. All you can do is a weak attempt to lure me to your website? I told you I will not go to that crappy site ever again, it is worthless and it allows you to gather information about my IP address and maybe more, I have serious reservations about your intentions.

Aplologies Michael, I’m brand new to this forum and I thought I had replied to the person I sent the message to last night. But considering your response to my initial questions to Luca, my questions to you would be the same. I would question anyone in favor of nuclear power as to whether or not they would live in a highly contaminated area following a nuclear accident.

I can only answer for myself, but the answer you are looking for is yes, I would have no qualms about moving into the Fukushima area. Your term “highly contaminated” bothers me, because there are very few “highly contaminated areas” much less than you would think. You seem to think there is something I should be afraid of in Fukushima, the fear of radiation is much more dangerous and far reaching than the radiation is….I do hope this helps you get over your fears.

Heather, as you have probably noticed I am very pro-nuclear power, there are many reasons for this. Nuclear power has proven to be the safest way to make electricity, per unit of energy produced. It is a very clean way to make electricity with minimal carbon production (currently about the same as wind power) very little pollution and a much smaller physical footprint than any other way to make electricity. It is also very reliable and provides power, on demand, 24/7 this is very important. I calibrate and maintain the equipment which controls and monitors how a nuclear power plant operates safely so I am very familiar with the level of risk involved. The bottom line is with the education, experience and knowledge I have attained in 35 years as a qualified radiation worker, I believe nuclear power saves lives, improves the standard of living and helps mitigate climate change. https://cna.ca/news/nuclear-power-saves-lives-six-quick-facts/

It’s always ZERO on the books because they know how to manipulate the data. True figures of damages from Chernobyl estimated at a million plus. There are books written on the subject by well respected people …. Birth defects miscarriages and unprovable cancers have, can, and are continuing to occur from Chernobyl which was a fraction of the severity of FUKUSHIMA.

You and the glorious nuke industry KNOW THAT THE CANCERS ARE UNTRACEABLE BACK TO THEIR SOURCE…. cancers occurring 10 – 50 years later go undisclosed as to their cause!!!!! It’s your ace in the hole isn’t it, you are destroying lives!

The fear-exploitation activists love that they can pretend any random illness is due to radiation. They are perfectly willing to lie about and exploit those with cancer, heart illness and congenial defects.

Even hydroelectric has killed many more than nuclear ever will judging by its safety record so far. Chernobyl is somewhat of a unique case as it was Soviet Era construction and design with no concern for the safety of the operators, residents etc. I was way out in the wilds of China when that accident happened and there wasn’t a peep in the news about it. Wonder why?

I was being facetious but I guess it went over your head. Not only am I old enough but I travelled in both the USSR and Comunist China so saw first hand what life was like for the residents of both. To those governments, lives of the average citizen were worthless.

There’s lots of problems in the USA but in that regard, there is no comparison. An example of “cheap life” that comes to mind occured in China during one of my business trips there where we visited an oil well drilling rig. I’d been shocked by the total lack of safety gear and procedures that I’d seen but wasn’t really prepared for what I was told about a fellow working on the rig floor who’d slipped and fallen into the rotary table drive where his body just stayed till the hole was done (it was late fall so he didn’t rot too fast) at which time he was thrown into the slop pit. End of story and no effort was made to even contact family about this. That’s what I mean by life being cheap in some places.

USSR did not admit the accident right away. Swedish sensors were first ones which detected rising radiation levels two days after the accident.
Same reactor type what was in use at Chernobyl is still used at Leningrad Nuclear Power plant. There is Four of them. Reactor nr. 1 has partially melted once, but there is no valid information even now days.

A “partially melted” reactor doesn’t work without a complete core overhaul. If it’s operating, it’s fine.

Source: I’m a Reactor Operator. Not that guy that operates the water systems. Not that guy that operates the turbine generators. I shim the control rods. I watch reactor power. My watchstation is actually called “Reactor Operator.”

What was wrong with Chernobyl? The operators. They were trained for generating electricity far more than they were nuclear operation, as operators are now. Russia didn’t care so much, not like America did (we have Admiral Rickover to thank for extensive blankets of overprotection in our system. Before you sight TMI – nothing is perfect, and that wasn’t a harmful issue for anyone, apart from jobs). They were operating wrong on so many levels. They had stuff broken they shouldn’t have been operating with that no plant would get away with these days. They were operating outside of procedure, they knew it, they were doing things they knew were wrong… the list goes on and on. The design of the reactor was poor, but that’s not what did them in. They were all ridiculously stupid.

I don’t know about RMBK, it may be possible to repair them with an overhaul that is a lot smaller than the one that would be needed for a BWR/PWR. The French UNGG reactors of Saint-Laurent which were also graphite moderated, natural uranium based, but gas cooled, had 2 partial meltdowns, INES level 4 events, but could be repaired and restarted in a few years. Yes, those 2 meltdowns are much more significant than TMI but almost no one knows about them.

Leigh! You can’t be serious, can you? All that was proved at TMI is that Big Nuke will lie to you to your grave, at all costs, to protect their phony market … can you spell Price-Anderson … which absolves the reactor manufacturers of any meaningful liability damages …. which ensures the reactors will be built shoddy and cheap … because when they do melt down and explode, the big boys have no skin in the game. This is called fascism, and it should be illegal. Or maybe these comments are above your level of intellect?

Memo to Leigh: Containment was breached at TMI. NRC lied about it. Same guy who sold that lie, Lake Barratt, an NRC staffer, is now selling lies for TepCo, wholesale. Go buy yourself some. They are red hot sellers. No one wants to hear a death sentence for everything they love. Go get yourself some nice, reassuring pro-nuclear lies.

Ned, I don’t know whether you are deliberately lying or just misinformed but you really need to educate yourself regarding nuclear energy, radiation etc. I’m a mechanical engineer with 40 years experience, quite a bit in power generation though I consult my older brother who worked in the nuclear power industry in Europe both building and commisioniing stations in France and elsewhere, for the details of radiation etc. I do know enough about radiation and its effects on us to know when to be concerned and when not to, something it seems you are rather lacking in judging by your hysterical rant. The world is awash in radiation, our species has evolved in this background radiation, thus within limits it really isn’t dangerous and some studies show it’s actually beneficial.
I repeat, “no one died from Three Mile Island’s failure”, just like no one died or will die from radiation from Fukushima.
Ned, you need to figure out what life’s risks are and quit being hysterical about the non-risks. You sound like one of those who are afraid to flyi in an airline but feel safe driving the same distance. You’re just not being realistic, whether deliberately or not is hard to tell.

Background radiation is not the same as weaponized isotopes and you know it. Quit equating nuclear isotopes to natural bg radiation from bananas, all the shills are saying that and it is NOT THE SAME!!!!!! Talk about the half life of Plutonium and Strontium and what it does in the human body! You obviously know?

Don’t be so absurd. Even the most hysterical predictions weren’t remotely as many as that and they’ve all been statistically shown to be greatly overstated. Some of them predicted tens or hundreds of thousands of additional cases of thyroid cancer but the stats show 15. The increase in lukemia cases didn’t materialize at all, and if there were going to be an increase it would have been obvious within a decade. The Wiki article provides a reasonable summary of the event…

Safe yes…other than the tons of nuclear waste being buried in underground vaults, locked away to create a pandora’s box for future generations. This article is misleading in it’s own right. Sure…the field may only have a couple matchsticks on it…but by this authors logic, and if it where to be taken to heart, it would lead to a field COVERED in nothing BUT matchsticks over the long run. I mean, what the hell is three matchsticks? So no why not 4? Bah, lets bury them so no one sees them, and then say that there are NONE. Silly.

It appears to me that you do not have much knowledge about how the nuclear fuel cycle works. Used fuel can be recycled, and the really nasty stuff coming from the fission of nuclear fuel, the so called “fission products”, take very little space one they are processed and captured in a glassy substance which isolates the radioactive material.

Then the resulting glassy substance is put into secure containers that are placed in a storage facility the size of a basketball court, and are kept there temporarily, until a solution to the POLITICAL problem of what to do with radioactive waste is solved.

Meanwhile, in a room the size of a basketball court in France lie the radioactive waste coming from the safe operation of hundreds of nuclear power plans worldwide…

And for the height of your ignorance you call this… silly.

Time to go back to studying some, @1cdc44bd6a735ca17cb4485c4f560057:disqus. Ah, what’s in a (nick)name…

Then Luca why is OPG spending over a billion dollars to build a DGR that will hold 2000 cubic metres that is 2200 feet deep to bury low and intermediate radiative waste? This is not even touching the fuel rods. Look up Kincardine DGR.

This is offensive nonsense. I suppose the mass deaths of animals off Alaska and the huge rise in infant mortality rates on the West coast following Japan’s non-event are products of hysteria, right? If there is a lot of alarmist coverage in the American media about Fukushima, I wish the author would kindly direct me to it, because I have yet to see anything–including, most recently, the outcome of Typhoon Danas’ impact on Unit 4’s fuel rod pool as of 10/10/13–on US TV or print media since this episode began over two years ago. The last time I saw TV coverage about Fukushima was a glamorous woman on MSNBC (which is owned by GE, makers of the Japanese reactors) describing the interior of one of the damaged reactors as containing “nuclear stuff”–no joke, these are exactly the words she used. So much for the intimidating complexities of nuclear power (first described by Einstein as a dangerous and impractical way to boil water). In truth, nuclear plant design has not substantially improved since the 1960s. If it were so safe, then why does the Price-Anderson Act exist to limit plant owner liability in the event of a disaster to one dollar for every one hundred dollars of damage suffered by the public? The only reasons Westinghouse and GE agreed to build the first plants in the 50s was because of such a proviso, which guarantees ratepayers have to pay the bulk of the damage to life and property incurred by power providers’ actions. if homeowners’s insurance refuses to provide protection in the event of a metldown, then why should any of us tolerate it?

For those who don’t click the links, they debunk Rolf’s laughable propositions. Even in Chernobyl, (the worst nuclear disaster in history and worse by orders of magnitude than Fukushima) there were no fast die-offs hundreds of miles away.

This misses the bottom line cause, and the MSM never really paid attention to it either:
My understanding it that this was a DIESEL FUEL DISASTER: apparently all the emergency cooling systems were working, at the top of the hill, EXCEPT that some designer sited the Emergency Diesel fuel tanks near the shore line…. Was it for convenience of refueling from barges?? While the Diesel Generators were safely up the slope, with all the rest of it…

In 1994 the author, K Kemm, was appointed to a Washington Dc conservative lobby group…its name: committee for a constructive tomorrow (Cfact)….this right wing group has waged a long war against environmental activism. The committee interestingly has stated that it believes that additional carbon dioxide being emitted by China, India and other
developing countries could bring a major additional benefit: helping to
protect wildlife habitats, enhance oceanic biota and preserve crop
yields under sub-optimal climatic conditions

The authors twist in the present article is that Unless people die nothing has happened!

The author is part of the global nuclear village as he is a consultant and therefore a mouthpiece of the industry. He says there is no damage to property in Fukushima, try telling that to the 80,000 people who have been evacuated from the exclusion zone and have been living in Government shelters for the past three years. Thousands have lost their livelihood as they cannot farm or fish anymore. The ground soil is contaminated. He also advocates letting the contaminated water into the ocean, what arrogance. Fukushima is still raging and will continue to do so for a very long time. Mother Nature will teach humans about the enormous costs of abusing our blue planet.

Radiation is naturally occuring. Many things found in nature are naturally radioactive. The sun emits radiation for one. Fear is definitely a powerful thing as the author suggests. If people realized much they were exposed to daily mildest power would be no big deal. But the average person knows next to nothing about it do they glean all their information from the media.

You should be ashamed and you certainly shouldn’t be allowed to speak on the subject of radiation safety. You have taken a serious disaster and have attempted to convince people it is harmless and nothing but a big hoax. Go crawl back in whatever slime hole you crawled out of and count the pile of money you made for making a fool out of yourself by deceiving others.

So a highly qualified academic nuclear physicist should not be allowed to discuss thel basics of nuclear physics and rationally explain the fundamentals of ionizing radiation?? Do you realise how fundamentally stupid that makes you?

Dear Kelvin,
Are you getting afraid that nuclear power will be banned or so? What else can be the reason that you lie ? You want to let us believe that there is no nuclear disaster because no one died ? That is the yard stick for you? Total private property damaged by radiation….zero? Really ? Everybody went back to their home and lived happenly ever after in the evacuation zone.
When IEAE comes to the conclusion that there were 3 of the highest level on the INES scale accidents, plus one 3 level ( is almost half way of the highest level, which is 7 ) and you dare to write down that “far from being a nuclear disaster the Fukushima incident was actually a wonderful illustration of the safety of nuclear power.”, than i know that there is something serious wrong here.
As you know Kelvin, radiation is a well known cause for cancers among many other nasty things, and we all know that you do not fall dead when you have a cancer. It will take a few years, how convient… And how are you going to prove that it came from radiation anyway ? you know that is not possible, how convinient!
You also know about the contaminated groundwater that flows to sea for the last 2 and half years to the sea ( that is a bit more than a swimming pool…), the spent fuel pool number 4 in a very precair state with devasting effects if it goes wrong, the high number of Fukushima kids who suddenly got thyrod cancer ( and suspected thyrods ) and so on, and so on ( the list is very long, but you know that too as a ), but you ‘forgot’ to mention that… Why is that Kelvin? It doesn’t suit your ‘ sientific theory’? I guess you rather have your take at the bad press that keeps ruining your business, how dare they !
Why do you not move to Fukushima with your family? And live over there for about 10 years and help a bit out in the evacuation zone, wearing nothing but your swimmingpants… no problemo over there, right? If no one died of your family or has develloped any cancer in those 10 years, I might start to think you are right. but for the time being, I rather stick with the specialists who have a very different sientific take at this nuclear disaster. I hope you do not mind that Kelvin and you can sleep well at night, after you exposed yourself in this article so badly. Nuclear powerplant that blow up, are actually safe, no one died !

Interesting reply, lots of conjecture and blather and your only facts become more speculation – “When IEAE comes to the conclusion that there were 3 of the highest level on the INES scale accidents, plus one 3 level ( is almost half way of the highest level, which is 7 ) and you dare to write down that “far from being a nuclear disaster the Fukushima incident was actually a wonderful illustration of the safety of nuclear power.”, than i know that there is something serious wrong here.” You know “something serious wrong here”, how? (You need to make an argument why 3 is so bad on a scale of 7, instead you bloviate). “The list is very long” – what list? who made ‘the list’? How do I know it wasn’t the ‘nuclear haters’ making the list? No argument to move me, but a weak attempt a logic – “Why do you not move to Fukushima with your family?” Is this an attempt to prove that since he won’t move there, you must be correct in your view? I understand the feeble attempts to make a point, but they have no value for the reader? If you are going to make an argument please stick to verifiable facts, make your points, and drop the op ed or you will continue to look like an uniformed child spewing and whining about what you don’t like. The emotion that runs thru your response tells me that this article challenges your position and agenda and you must strike back even without an argument…

So what about all he people that have worked in the nuclear industry, getting exposed to radiation daily for 30 some odd years that have not had cancer nor their offspring? I guess they are just rare people.

They were not “High.” I saw them. They weren’t even for standards pertaining to nuclear operation, which are extraordinarily low. As in, you usually see less radiation as a nuclear operator than you would see as a construction worker outside in the Sun all day, so when you see levels that amount to ANYTHING it’s “high” by the NRC’s standards, even if the Sun is still of greater concern.

The Admiral is not a nuclear trained individual and was merely inquiring the NRC as to whether or not he should have.
That man you are talking about was my boss (many levels above me), and also consulted another one of my bosses (a few levels below him), the USS George Washington’s Reactor Officer. The answer was “No.”
The answer from those of us below him, actually taking the readings, many of which were used by the NRC, was “Why are we talking about evacuation?” and summary laughs about the notion of it – until we realized that people who were uneducated on nuclear power and it’s effects were serious, to which we responded with a facepalm and “Whyyyyy?” Because we knew we didn’t need to.
I’m educated on it. I took the surveys. I still was fighting our Admin to get my wife over here to where we live now on the Tokyo Bay. (They weren’t filling out the paperwork for other reasons and had been delaying it for months prior, not because of 3/11. The only related delay because of 3/11 was because of all of the OTHER people freaking out over nothing. She was finally admitted to come a little over a month later once everyone in the Navy stopped freaking out because we realized it was nothing.)

There was no evacuation!
Oh, but wait, the USS George Washington evacuated! Yes! That counts, right?
No, it doesn’t. Why not? Because of politics. The GW “evacuated” for a month because we have a 3-part agreement with the Japanese to operate our carrier out of Yokosuka:
1) No Japanese citizens will receive detectable radiation from a US Naval Reactor.
2) No RAM (Radioactive Material) will ever be present of Japanese Soil from a US Naval Reactor.
3) No detectable contamination will be discharged from our reactor.
Considering we can detect individual counts – as in, individual gammas or neutrons – “undetectable” levels are so low they pale in comparison to many household items you encounter every day – like your ceramic-ware.
As we could not prove the contamination we were getting on our ship was not from our own reactors (logically we knew that which was present wasn’t, but nuclear plants freak out about things the public would consider ridiculous and overzealous), or that future contamination wasn’t, we pulled out until the levels around Tokyo died down to a level that was so low it was no longer a concern even with our sensitive equipment… which took less than a month, I might add.

I guess we are just rare people. My husband works in nuclear power, and has done so for over 15 years. Commercial pilots receive more radiation exposure than he does. I think the term “nuclear” just puts fear in the hearts of those who are not educated on the topic.

He’s saying that there it’s not a “disaster” as most people would define a disaster, which is true.
More harm was done to Japan (FYI, I live here and was here for the Earthquake/Fukushima) over freaking out over the Reactors by neglecting the people than was done by the reactors themselves.

As I’ve commented before: Yes, there is contamination and radiation. It isn’t much.
An apt comparison I’ve used before is that there is water in the air, but you aren’t drowning. The levels are so low, those who evacuated Japan received more than those who stayed.

It didn’t blow up, FYI. (It had buildups due to radiolitic decomposition of water causing a buildup of hydrogen which caused “explosions” as pressure was vented – which was not done in the vicinity of the core.)
The fact that you suggest it did brings into question the validity of your statements.
Please, stop making assumptions. I find it funny how you’re asking him if it doesn’t fit into his “scientific” viewpoint and provide nothing of value yourself. Just crackpot conspiracy theories.

David, it is so great to see your comments. I frequently try to debunk radiation phobia on various sites, but I don’t have your credentials. We need nuclear power for so many reasons (air pollution, declining gas and oil supplies, global warming, ocean acidification, etc.). It’s crazy not to be investing heavily in generation IV reactor technology.

It would be great to see you comment on the Pandora’s Promise Facebook page and the many “scary” articles on the web about nuclear power and Fukushima. Keep up the good work.

David, thanks from me, too, for your patient, reasoned responses. Much more patient than mine…
I just recalled another factoid… after the Fukushima incident, Japan essentially shut down their nuclear generation infrastructure, right?
After that, they had to switch to fossil-fuel-burning generators to meet the basic electrical needs of the country!
Maybe Marushka has some data on the economic AND environmental damage THAT did to Japan… at a time when they really didn’t need the extra damage…

Yup. Its just like Lance Armstrong and all the other past great frauds of this world… “I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it I didn’t do it ……………… ok well maybe I did it”

The fallout in Vermont is a now closing nuclear facility that will be mothballed. This allows the new electricity monoplies to invite fracking gas proponents to turn our private property into transmission fields and high premium wind energy that blows up mountains.

You realize that you will receive far more radiation living near a coal fired power plant that you would if you lived near a nuclear power plant… right? The funny thing about radiation is that everything has its own natural radiation. This includes coal, and man does the stuff have its share of radioactive properties. When you burn the coal for power, you have to vent the exhaust into the atmosphere. Guess what- a large chunk of that radiation ends up in the air with the coal ash that escapes. Don’t believe me? Maybe you will believe the EPA- here, let me leave this link here… http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/coalandcoalash.html. Don’t believe the government? Here is a link to an article from the scientific american… http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste.

I’ve asked myself the same question, and found the answer: It is not “indefinitely”, the goal is set at 100 000 years, which includes an extra safety limit from the calculated 10 000 years. 10 000 years is the time it takes for nuclear waste do detoxify itself to the same toxicity level as the original uranium, if eaten. Personally I find that reasoning silly, how many people die from eating too much Uranium today (LD50 0,1g/kg), zero? Then why must something be safer than zero? And how is anyone supposed to eat something buried 500m deep? 600years would be good enough limit, where toxicity is reduced by 99%. Gamma radiation is reduced by 10^9 in just 1m of soil. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html
Compare this to any other energy source we use, where there is not only risk but several deaths each year. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
I read somewhere that a coal plant releases more uranium into our atmosphere than a nuclear plant stores in barrels. How is it not safer to replace coal with nuclear then? Or what about industrial waste, mercury for example, that does not even have a half-life and will be indefinitely toxic?

It’s a good question. I mean, we can dig holes kilometers deep (we do it for fracking). So why not a single hole? I mean, there’s only about a Best Buy’s volume of waste, and 2km is deeper than any aquifer. Drill a hole, drop the waste. IMO, no need to even keep it in containment; just pour out the fuel pellets and if it reacts, so be it. We’ve set off bombs underground a mere 300 meters without releasing radiation. 2km and a pile not designed to be or enriched enough to be bomb-like wouldn’t harm anyone. Most energetic case: it’d melt itself and the surrounding earth until it fell into the mantle.

Interesting idea but I’d say it would be better to save that spent fuel and use it in an IFR or MSR. They will eat that “waste” for lunch and spit out 20 times more energy than has already been spent. No need to go to the mines for more raw fuel until that “waste” is burned.

The same way that we are safe from all the uranium and thorium under the ground naturally. (You’ve got to dig it up to be exposed.) But nuclear “waste” is a bit of a myth. Some generation IV nuclear reactor technology can use that waste as fuel. Generation IV reactors are also inherently safe (no human intervention nor engineered safety system needed). But we may never build generation IV reactors due to radiation superstition. (Odd that superstition seems to rule the day in the 21st century, just when we need a really clean and super-abundant energy source).

The requirement to indefinitely store spent fuel is a political one. The technically correct answer is to reprocess the waste into new fuel, store the tailings from that for 300 years, then reclaim the mineral resources to which it all decays.

It is interesting that in all the bizarrely negative comments on this article, not a single one has been based on validated science. Not a single one has put forward a single valid scientific critique of a single fact of nuclear science elaborated by Dr Kremm. To a man, they are all either emotional, or ad hominem, or based on other logical fallacies, or massively ill-informed or based on complex conspiracies or, in a worrying number of instances, certifiable paranoia. Even to blaming those evil old well-poisoning Jews. They are a very sad commentary on the lack of knowledge and the ability to apply logical analysis.

The total estimated release of Cs-137 is estimated to be 11 PBq – or about 3.5 kg. Over something like 400 tonnes of water. Meanwhile, the iodine has already decayed away, and no one was exposed to a significant amount of it.

So a Mr. Howard Priory has his dander up, in defense of nuclear power, claiming all arguments against said power source are un-scientific and ad hominem. Well Mr. Prior, you are wrong by orders of magnitude. Mr. Kremm’s statements are silly and misleading, that the radiation leaks were minor … that no one has or will be injured by the released radionuclides. Your pro-science mantra and its easy sell is what has landed us in this pickle. The nuclear boys need shills and trolls like you to quiet the rage and the panic, which are very much in order. For those who have a hard time understanding how the Nazis under Hitler found popular support for their lies, a useful analogy is this population of pro-nuclear power techies and wannabe scientists spouting nuclear lies on this site and everywhere.

I usually do not share on sites where the pro-nukers spout their venom … but I was invited here by Dr. Goodheart, and so there you go. At least all that contaminated seafood will have a ready market with the shills and trolls, form a little while.

And the pro-nukers will bottom fish the evacuating coastal real estate markets, for a little while, providing some necessary liquidity to this market full of forced sellers.

You dudes do serve a purpose … rather like maggots.

peace to the pro-nukers. May they see the light. Oh damn, that;s radiation, too!

I was stationed in Japan onboard the USS George Washington (in the reactor department) when the tsunami hit Fukushima. Our sensors are extremely sensitive, and the dust was able to set them off. Naturally, almost everyone not-nuclear trained started to panic about the potential contamination, which lead to the option of a mass evac from base. Of course, all of the nuclear trained workers just rolled their eyes and expected a massive influx of work to quell fears and start cleanup.

‘Hysteria’? The exposure and health problems are very real and have been recorded on film as well.
Admiral in Japan called in to NRC about exposure and concerns because exposure was profoundly high – on deck and at the base in Tokyo.
Try reading the NRC FOIA docs yourself

The base is not at Tokyo.
It’s at Yokosuka, Japan, south of Tokyo. It is on the Tokyo bay, but there is more than a full city (Yokohama and it’s surrounding suburbs and towns) between the two. I should know. I’m a Nuclear Operator (trained specifically in Reactor Safety) stationed at Yokosuka. I’m on the base, at my home, as we speak.

I received my dosimeter from the Navy. I was a co-worker of Matt Cash, also aboard the USS George Washington (I am still attached to it to this day and live in Japan). I had the pleasure of being one of the lucky few who got to stand in a big giant metal box and look at the readouts of how much I’d received – which amounted to “if you’d eaten a banana and it was still in your digestive tract, it’d light up like a spotlight.” (Bananas contain ~15 bequerels of K-40, or 15 disintegrations a second – virtually nothing) Essentially, being “in the plume,” meant “DON’T LICK THE GROUND,” and you’d be fine. Even if you did, you’d pretty much have to eat the dust on a regular basis to have an effect – that effect being you might set off a radiac. To get blood or blood effects, the first signs of radiation sickness, you’d have to have gone to extreme measures and it’d have to be quite intentional. It was actually to the point that it couldn’t be guaranteed it wasn’t coming from the Chinese Coal Plants, who regularly spew out trace amounts of uranium and other harmful elements and contaminate far more than Fukushima ever has.
I then had the pleasure of doing dose measurements on hundreds of my coworkers, likely Matt Cash, the above commenter, as well. I don’t remember who all I surveyed. It was a large number. Most people’s bodies, even the areas of concern of Cesium concentration acted as a shield to background radiation.

I also had the pleasure of using much of my training in radiation work. I was able to go up with our Engineering Laboratory Technicians and survey our flight-deck, which is coated in non-skid – as in, very porous and probably the best thing to trap contamination around, and hold it in to keep it from getting washed away by rain. Our sensors are so sensitive and use measurements so miniscule (more miniscule than a millisievert, as denoted in the article) that it LOOKED like we were reading a lot. Naturally, when we saw large numbers, some of us new guys, knowing a lot about radiation and not a lot about it’s application at the time (still far more than the general public), freaked out a LITTLE bit (we still knew it wasn’t enough to harm us).
Naturally, we decided to put our educations to good use – those “high” levels of radiation amounted to virtually nothing at all. Enough that laying down on that flight-deck would net you about twice as much as sun did above you. And that’s on something that trapped that stuff in – and getting direct exposure to it – and again, for a very limited time.

I’ll say this again: I’ve been educated on nuclear power by the Navy (it is frankly not probably as good as the Author’s education, but is years worth of education most commentors on this article do not have). I was there. I held the radiacs. I punched the numbers on a calculator. I work with people who have their living made off of this matter and consulted with them. The math added up to a grand whopping “don’t worry about it.” Yes, there was radiation. There was contamination. There still is contaminated water at Fukushima. There is even a bit of contaminated water in the ocean.
There’s water in the air. Are you worried about drowning? No? Why not? Oh, it’s because there is so little?
Tokyo’s background levels are so low right now, you’d actually be getting a break if you traveled there by boat (as opposed to getting a whopping 7mrem by flying – again, nothing, but more than any of us got by staying in Japan instead of flying out) from, say, a place with high background levels, like California.

Navy Nuclear-power Admirals and Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory historically “freak out” more than anyone else. Nuclear Power Plants have a lot of public hysteria to deal with. You say you detected radiation outside of a nuclear power plant, it doesn’t matter if it was from the sun, people will freak out. The military has a lot of the same problems. Combine the two, and you have people who have to walk on eggshells for a living – and in doing so, the worst they can do is expose anyone to anything considerable, whether or not it is their fault.
The Admiral you are talking about is not nuclear trained, and so has no idea what to do. He (my former boss, before he rotated to another location) was concerned on the matter because he did not wish us, or our families, harmed, and needed to know what to do.

This is the kind of information that should be circulated by those who understand science and technology.

We need to have more people who are well aware of the fact that we can measure radioactivity down to the individual atom decay, but that does not mean that it’s dangerous.

We need to have more people spread the good news about how clean and reliable power generation using nuclear is, plain and simple. And you’ve just done it, right there, by telling us about your first-hand experience. Thank you.

Your sarcasm is not lost on me. You may need to adjust the dosages on those medications. Sarcasm is the cheapest form of humor known to mankind; including science. Your meds seem to be confusing you into thinking that you are clever.

Thank you for your precious advice. This time, though, I will consult with my doctor before changing dosage on my medications. You see, I rather trust people who are educated on the topic on which they discuss.

I think its important to rely on facts before coming to any pessimistic conclusion. Having basic knowledge of chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics are necessary to have any conceptual substance to bring to an argument such as this. Rather than relying on word of mouth by uneducated activism, you should take some of the basics. A tree branch could not simply grow without the root. Your response as well as toggles (not trying to undermine; although your responses are simply to project your anguish via ignorance) are about as equivalent to someone who believes standing too close to a microwave will deal radiation exposure which is false and I didn’t learn it from a tv show like myth busters; I actually took Chemistry lol…

David McFarland, Rod Adams of Atomic Insights has picked up your comment in his blog, and added his note to your message:

“David McFarland – thank you for your Navy service and for your service to humanity by providing this first hand report. If you read this, please contact me through the contact link available in the footer of each page on Atomic Insights. We have a lot to talk about.”

Rod is by far the most trusted source of information on nuclear, and has been in service for many years as reactor engineer onboard submarines. He’s an icon in the nuclear communication world. Get in touch with him, I am sure this could bring good things to the cause of nuclear.

That’s for your great post. Quick question for you–it’s not background radiation I’m worried about; it’s the ingestion of the isotopes over time (considering biomagnification and biomagnification especially). Is this also a non-issue?

Directly around the time of a nuclear disaster, particularly if you’re close to it, I’d be cautious; I don’t think evacuating the area around Fukushima was a bad call for that reason. Odds are no one will see any effects, but chances for cancer to rise in some cases. We aren’t talking a massive sweeping newsbreaking story, we’re talking a handful.

As far south as I am, just south of Tokyo, there wasn’t a lot to be concerned about. I stayed indoors, sure, but if I hadn’t it wouldn’t have made a difference. It’s just a matter of “being outside right now increases my odds of getting cancer by 1:1,000,000 (That’s not a real statistic, by any means), I don’t want to be that guy.”

Right now, the only area of any concern for isotopes are the areas at the plants themselves. A good way to think of contamination is that it is dust – and often is just that – it can be washed away. Sometimes it might take a while, or take soap, water, tape, et cetera, but it’s not likely to last. A good rainstorm cleans up a good amount. If you eat Tuna that spawned from Fukushima, you’re getting less than a banana – at least from what I hear.

If you aren’t in Japan, be more worried about everything around you. Odds of you having detectable contamination around you are slim, unless you’ve got a really good radiac and get lucky finding some. Much of the world – realistically – saw very little fallout. What they did see wasn’t anything to worry about.

If you are in Japan… still, be more worried about everyday things.

I like to compare it to the fact that the air has water in it, but it’s nothing your body isn’t used to by any means. A little more humidity isn’t an issue. Being in the plume might be considered like being in a nice mist. Still, not hurting you. You might be able to actually notice some condensation.

I appreciate your insights and am glad that no one was signifcantly hurt, but let me point out that the Fukushima “wreck” could have been much worse. I don’t know all of the facts but I recall that operators trying to keep the cores cooled and the cooling pools controlled had immense difficulties and things easily could have gotten much, much hotter.

Let me also point out that we don’t have many models for what could have happened. These aren’t everyday occurrences.
What would have happened if it had gotten hotter?

Do we even know how much more would have spread?

Really, the worst case scenarios put out by anyone came out with:

1) Limits COULD have been violated.
2) Still no lasting harmful effects and no real civilian populace damage.

The US Military, if I recall from a few articles I read, placed their worst case scenario as Mother Nature doing the impossible and pretty much keeping the plume aimed directly at Tokyo for a long duration of time.

Even that wouldn’t have called for an evacuation, IIRC. Perhaps Iodine be issues, yes, but more as a precautionary.

Well, the fuel pools weren’t controlled for a few weeks. If even one of them developed a medium-sized leak and gradually gone dry and fuel melts there, while wind blows to Tokyo… evacuate a 40-million megapolis? We were not that far from such a harrowing scenario.

How exactly the hose would be put there if lethal gamma dose (~3000 rem) at the pool’s railing would be absorbed in mere 10 seconds?

Whoever is going there would be dead.

Worse than that, even though arguably a volunteer may decide to go anyway and save 40 millions from radiation exposure and evacuation, under such immense fields the person may be quickly incapacitated (lose consciousness) and still be unable to perform necessary operations.

Uh, I’m guessing that it hasn’t occurred to you that you don’t have to have a guy standing there to put a hose there? Hmm, let’s see:
* get a long hose and pull it over with a helicopter
* get a water cannon and pour water on from a distance
* get a big bucket on a helicopter

it might also be worth mentioning that since they *were* controlled and didn’t actually spew millions of Curies of material, the whole discussion of why they couldn’t be controlled is actually pretty stupid.

There is no damage to the reactor #4 spent fuel pool, and the building is in good shape, thank you very much.

So unless @nikkkom:disqus really believed the ridicolous statements that the water in the SFP had evaporated (?) or leaked out (??) made by “expert” Gundersen, the same guy that said that there had been “nuclear explosions” at Fukushima Dai-ichi, I think we should halt the discussion.

Oh by the way, there are also a lot of robots being used today onsite at Fukushima Dai-ichi, to inspect the area where the radiation doses to humans would be too high…

This Italian-named idiot is another of my favorites. No problems at SFP4??? Let’s hope. SFP1,2,3 are the real bitches, other than the missing corii. Who is paying you guys to outright lie? Or were you too stupid to sell these asinine comments? I’m sure you could get a Troll contract from GE, maker of these ridiculous poison spewing reactors, whose initials conveniently stand for their true corporate mission, as in Global Exterminators.

peace to all the pro-nuclear fools … how does the old saw go??? …. forgive them, for they know not what they do …

Thanks, though it’s not a big accolade to be kept as a favorite by a jerk like yourself, in all fairness. And I am Italian-named as I happen to be Italian, much to your disliking. Guess what, we do speak English too!

Yes, no problem at SFP4, despite all of what ignorant people like yourself keep saying. The process can be monitored online at:

It sure sounds like you have some kind of skin in this game Luca Bertagnolio, trying your best to downplay everything about what is clearly a disaster. Maybe Ned Childs who posted above was right and that you work for GE or some other entity that’s in desperate need of some serious positive spin right now. Nothing would surprise me.

My Father was in the Navy In 1946. His ship was the USS Sphinx. He was at Bikini Atoll for “Operation Crossroads” Was on the deck with his shipmates to watch “Able also Baker” the big brass called off “Charlie because Baker was so dirty they did not want to be sued. He was there for two shots. The Navy said yes you can swim in the water, yes the water is ok to drink, yes go scrub the target ships. My Father died when he was 39 from those 2 shots. The government covered it up. 42,000 men were a part of all the atomic bomb testing in the Pacific at that time. My Father died a young man from the fall out. So don’t you dare tell me things are just fine in Japan. Also I lived 150 miles from Hanford Wa. I know what radiation does to humans.

Tepco’s own website showed pics of everything including reactor #4 and it was destroyed. Fuel rods have been strewn everywhere. The claims that the building is immaculate, that rods are meticulously being removed and pics of it that are circulating are faked!! Tepco’s own website has 2000 original photos of the damage and building 4 is quite clearly destroyed. The media is going along with this blatant lie.

This industry is working their asses off to keep the reality covered up!!

In Chernobyl, later investigations showed that helo drops mostly missed the target, while pilots were working in fields of ~1000 rem/h. In the “fuel pool fire” scenario, fields would be much worse.
In Fukushima, same happened to water dumps to the pools, before it was determined that pools aren’t leaking.

Helo drops are _easier_ than pulling a hose through rubble and destroyed concrete with rebar sticking out in all directions.

> * get a big bucket on a helicopter

All of the above applies, plus helo can take at best a few tons of water. A pittance.

> * get a water cannon and pour water on from a distance

Was tried at Fuku too. Most of the water was missing the pool.

> it might also be worth mentioning that since they *were* controlled and didn’t actually spew millions of Curies of material, the whole discussion of why they couldn’t be controlled is actually pretty stupid.

It is not. The risk of spent fuel pools drying is small but real (not only my opinion but NRC’s too), and consequences can be incredibly devastating – can easily be worse than Chernobyl.

yeah … chasmartin … those explosions at Units one and three looked really “controlled” … who is the idiot here? “Get a bucket on a helicopter” … oh they did that and voila, they solved the problem … By the way: millions of Curies have spewed from these evil, uninsurable, crappily designed and under-designed, boiling water reactors … perhaps you’ve suffered some radiation sickness yourself to be so under-informed.

Memo to chasmartin: the corium/groundwater reactions are still out of control.

You pro-nuclear types are silly and misinformed. Have a little more polonium with your tobacco.

I would love to see you walk around without a moon suit at Fukushima and eat the fish in the sea if there are some left from there, please don’t harm the world with your propaganda just to protect your paycheck, ideology and cronies. It is shameful. The levels of thyroid issues are off the chart for the children of Fukushima, they already have cancers appearing, the levels of diabetes due to damage from radiation is also suddenly off the chart. Though there has been a hush and disinformation job done, there are too many people who are sick now for you to hold your head high. Shame. I too would love to believe nothing happened. Denial like ignorance can be bliss. Again, shame on you.

You are an interesting type chasrmartin because you are a ‘Republican Scientist’. Republicans have a very odd denial stance on science which is they love it when it helps them and they hate it when it hinders them. It’s like the global warming issue — Republicans HATE anything to do with it. They denied it for as long as they could until the data become too impossible to ignore, and then they changed their stance to ‘okay, it’s happening but humans aren’t the cause’ LOL! Humans aren’t the cause! It’s just all happening by itself! Oh my God that is funny. And speaking of God, a ‘Republican’ claiming to be a scientist is as ludicrous as the Vatican having an astronomy department; The only reason either parties use science and data isn’t for clarity, it’s so that you can fudge it and mold it until you come out with what you personally want for yourself.

spent fuel pools did run dry, helicopter runs with water barely hit the area, finally got targetted water… but not soon enough… what they cal three meltdowns… that IS significant.. and not at all under control.

Reminds me of the time back around 1982 when I was working at a division of my company that sold computer monitors.

Some rabid reporters got wind of the “radiation” coming from the monitors (this was back when they were “cathode-ray TUBES,” you understand?) so the engineers set up the most sensitive radiation detectors they could find (made by us, by the way) and searched for X-rays, microwaves and the like.

They did get some readings! After some analysis, some clever person blocked off the window in the testing area and the readings fell to nearly zero, from the previously low levels…

The “radiation” that was being detected was from the sun coming through the window and was still many times higher than anything the monitors were emitting.

Did that help people relax? Just a little bit? You’ve got to be kidding me…

You’ll also find that none of those are the Nuclear Operators on that boat. Many of those nuclear operators I went to US Navy A-school, Power School, and Prototype with. I was almost stationed on the Reagan myself.
Were hazing allowed in the Navy, the Nukes would probably haze them for their sheer stupidity.

Those sailors are not nuclear trained and do not have the slightest clue what they are talking about. They are the sorts who have so little idea what we’re talking about when we explain how our Thermoluminescent Dosimeters (our personal dosimetry) works (and it’s not that complicated) that we just give up and tell them that they are personal force-fields that protect us from radiation. I’ve had to do that before.
Worse, they believe it.

Let me put it this way: I’ve read those reports. We were briefed on them. My entire reactor department laughed at them until we realized people would believe their idiocy. I’m stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, on the George Washington. I know my stuff. I did surveys.
Yes, the Reagan did actually receive a more concentrated dose. Some of the helicopter crews moreso, but they did not receive enough to have an increased risk of cancer, and certainly not enough of an acute dose to cause any visible effects.
These sailors were not those crews. These are just fools who realized they could get money by exploiting sensationalist media. Were this an actual case (and the US Navy has the equipment to determine if it is – I’ve used it) the entirety of the Reagan’s Air Department and Deployed Squadrons would be coming out about this, and the US Navy would be making much more vehement public statements.

David, you sound more like a government cover-up PR person, either that or you have become complacent to the REAL dangers of nuclear fallout. I also find it very disingenuous that if you truly WERE a member of the navy that you’d be calling fellow sailors ‘fools’ who are just out to make money. In any case, here are the FACTS as of Jan 1st, 2014 concerning the crew of the U.S.S Reagan: After U.S. Navy sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan responded to the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan for four days, many returned to the U.S. with thyroid cancer, Leukemia, brain tumors and more. At least 71 sailors—many in their 20s—reported radiation sickness and
will file a lawsuit against TEPCO. The men and women accuse TEPCO of downplaying the danger of nuclear
radiation on the site. The water contaminated the ship’s supply, which led to crew members drinking, washing their bodies and brushing their teeth with contaminated water. Paul Garner, an attorney representing 51 sailors, said at least half of the 70-plus sailors have some form of
cancer. “We’re seeing leukemia, testicular cancer and unremitting gynecological bleeding requiring transfusions and other intervention,” Garner told The New York Post. Senior Chief Michael Sebourn, a radiation-decontamination officer assigned to test the aircraft carrier, said that radiation levels measured 300 times higher than what was considered safe at one point. Meanwhile sailors like Lindsay Cooper have contrasted their initial and subsequent feelings upon seeing and tasting metallic “radioactive snow” caused by freezing Pacific air that mixed with radioactive debris.
“We joked about it: ‘Hey, it’s radioactive snow!” Cooper said. “My thyroid is so out of whack that I can lose 60 to 70 pounds in one month and then gain it back the next. My menstrual cycle lasts for six months at a time, and I cannot get pregnant. “It’s ruined me.”

And I know enough sailors, nuclear trained, on the Reagan, and know roughly what their internal doses are to know it’s a load of BS.

I’m very misanthropic about the Navy. It comes with the job. Every day for an entire underway I’d leave my reactor plant, sometimes having been up for 50 hours, sometimes having done 20 hours of work straight (with exception of going to the bathroom and catching a quick snack) just to find myself face to face with a giant line of people trying to get Light-Limited-Duty or Sick-In-Quarters chits to get out of work, and I’d trade knowing glances with our Rad-Health Technician – A Corpsman specializing in doing the radiation-side of the medical field – who was at the time working through the line of people, trying to weed out the malingerers from those telling the truth about their cold, foot pain, or whatever it was. And there were plenty of malingerers – it got to the point that when corpsmen saw we [nukes] were wearing TLDs, they’d usher us to the front of the line relieved because they knew if we showed up we actually needed the medical attention and they got to do their job for once (and because it likely didn’t deal with a suspected STD and all issues involved). Now, they weren’t all malingerers trying to get out of work. Many of them were, and I quote several corpsmen, “just plain stupid,” essentially hypochondriacs who didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
So it would follow that someone gets nausea two years later and would automatically assume it was because they were in the Fukushima plumes, nevermind the fact that nausea is a short-term side-effect caused by radiation sickness due to exposures of 100+REM, rather than a long-term side effect caused by lower doses. Nevermind the fact that they didn’t get nearly enough to cause any measure of radiation sickness.

Seriously, some of these types of people are so stupid we were ordered to stop joking with them and telling them our dosimeters were “forcefields” that protected us from the radiation when we went down into the plants (that joke actually started out of frustration when some topsiders would ask what they were, and persist to question what the TLDs were, but didn’t have the slightest understanding atomic theory, so Nukes just started saying “it’s a forcefield”) because these guys were actually STEALING our TLDs during Fukushima.

“Government Cover-Up PR Person.” Yay for conspiracy-theory generalized “The Government,” vague-arguments!
The government couldn’t pay me enough to lie for them. The military nearly took my sanity (as with many of us), and my department took our retribution out on our old CO as frequently as we could (for legitimate concerns, mind you; he was doing illegal things – we later found out far more illegal things than we initially knew).

So, yeah, I actually knew guys that went to the Reagan to help out with that.
What they got for internal dose amounted to this:
“Oh, hey, look, you got a bit of iodine, a bit of cesium, a bit of strontium… but it’s not enough to even pull your TLD for, not even enough to break your EPA recommended limits.”
They were also dealing with the ventilation filters, which actually had enough contamination to be a concern, hence why Engineering Laboratory Technicians were required to handle THEM ALL, ergo, they got more than anyone else.
What ours (on the George Washington, stationed in Japan) amounted to:
“You ain’t got nothing.”

The people in this situation I’d believe (or at lease believe enough to look further into the situation) if they told me they had cancer:
Reagan Air Crew members who flew near the reactors.
Engineering Laboratory Technicians (who I’d probably trust implicitly, as their specialty is radiation, whereas mine is reactor safety.)

Those sailors don’t have leukemia. They’re just lazy. (Funny how “scientific facts” are only being used by this “expert” to poo-poo the serious, potentially lethal, and long-lasting effects of the criminal actions of TEPCO coupled with the lies of the Japanese government, while diagnoses of cancers are ignored.) What a complete tool.

Turns out when you only get 30mrem additional to your regular dose (about what you get in 30 days in much of America) over the course of a week, it ends up not being too big a deal. For instance, if you work outside, you’ll end up getting more over a much longer period. I’ve racked up 50 mrem in the same amount of time these Reagan sailors racked up 30.

I’m not at all defending TEPCO. If they’d upgraded their plants like GE told them to decades ago, most people wouldn’t know that Fukushima was a place.
Likewise, this incident probably saved a life or two of the sailors on the Reagan – what’s come out of this is that the expected, normal number of people out of 5000 sailors on the boat had cancer, they just found it much sooner than it would have been caught normally. Most sailors – like the idiots who claimed they had “back pain” were shoo’d away because claiming radiation-sickness two to three years after the fact is blatant malingering. Turns out when the radioisotope is out of your body within 70 days, it’s not going to give you the effects of active-radiation-exposure two years later.
Others legitimately had actual diseases. Some may have hid it from medical when they enlisted, others may have developed them later. Turns out that’s a thing, getting sick for reasons other than radiation. It just so happens there was a radiological incident, and Navy Medical being as absolutely “stellar” (as in not – turns out you can’t get sued for malpractice in the military, therefore the rise of the joke “What do you call the guy who gets the lowest college medical exam score? A lieutenant”) finally have something that they can’t find on WebMD, so they call it “radiation sickness.” And, the sailors, not being nuclear operators, don’t know any better and believe them. I’ve met fellow sailors who thought nuclear reactors worked like a combustion engine, or that radiation was like a gas. We aren’t dealing with people “in the know” here.

As for the lazy ones: If you want to call BS on that, I dare you to walk on a carrier at 0930 and look at the line, then ask everyone why they’re there. When I’ve got Corpsmen telling me how many are just slacking off of work, I’d say that’s a pretty good source for how many people are malingering in the Navy.

“Okayama University Professor Tsuda pointed out that there is no end of the number of researchers who say, “No cancer occurrence is expected from radiation exposure dose under 100 mSv,” after the Fukushima accident. Tsuda candidly said researchers should refrain from making such statements. […] As of the end of March 2014 [Nakadori, the central region of Fukushima that is 40-80 km from the Daiichi plant] had the highest detection rate [of thyroid cancer,] as much as 11 times higher than Aizu [western region of Fukushima, over 80 km from the plant]. […] thyroid cancers from municipalities other than Aizu region showed rates which were 15 to 40 times higher [than data from the National Cancer Center]. He sounded an alarm […] “It’s only been 3.1 to 3.2 years but there are so many cases observed in Fukushima. We need to take immediate countermeasures.” […] “They are still exposed to radiation. We can’t wait until the results come out. […] All of us as well as Fukushima residents are being exposed to radiation.”

Luca, you are a useful idiot. Does your denial serve you well ? Would that it could save the dying children of Fukushima and Chernobly. As you are no longer ignorant; you must simply be stupid.

I should point out that since there never is screening for thyroid cancer done in normal situations, whenever you start to do it you are bound to find people who have latent tumors which, in most cases, will be invisible for the whole life of the individual because they do not turn into a cancer.

And luckily thyroid cancers can be cured in 99.5% of the cases. And the irony of it is that radiations are used to heal from thyroid cancer…

You are aware that TEPCO and the Japanese government have been lying about the dangers associated with the radiation leaks from this disasterous nuclear accident all along ? Just as the headline of this article is a lie, and the article is spun cant. If you would care to refer to the link provided, you will find a researched examination of cancer rates reported so far as a result of this catastrophe.

No matter how many liars downplay the risks of the radiation released from Fukushima, the results remain. Check the reports of cancers and birth defects in the sea creatures if you’d like to be aware of the damage caused beyond the human sphere.

And thanks for personally examining all of those children from Fukushima, so that you know what you are talking about.

Your training in radiation is seriously lacking if you don’t understand the difference between radiation from a banana versus radiation exposure from man-made nuclear radiation such as Cesium 137, Iodine 131, Strontium 90, etc.
Please update your learning to understand the detrimental health effects from man-made nuclear radiation so that you can learn to protect your health.

Tell me, oh wise one, what the difference is between the radiation from the K-40 from a banana and “man made” cesium!

You want to know what it is? 10%. The gammas coming off of cesium are only 10% more energetic than those coming off of a banana’s K-40. That is not to say they are necessarily 10% more deadly; that very much relies on what they are passing through.

Radiation is radiation. There are four types. Natural or “man-made,” they have the same health-effects. Cesium and Potassium are both Beta-Gamma emitters with similar decay energies.

I’m quite well aware of the health effects. We are, in fact, trained on them.

Funny you feel the need to add the disclaimer. You also feel the need to comment on most every article in regards to this topic. The way you speak about your fellow sailors is maddening. It’s also funny how many of the words you use to describe your fellow sailors are the same as those used by their doctors.

I feel the need to comment on this subject because it is one I am very adamant about.

Since my last post seven months ago, I’ve recently heard more accounts from sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan. I’ll paraphrase them down:
“These people complaining of medical issues from the radiation are either idiots, malingerers, or both. For them, it’s all about the money.”
I talk about my fellow sailors because, unlike many of the general populace who are all about Nationalism, I realize my fellow sailors are, like me, regular people. Like regular people, they are very capable of being completely and totally ignorant and very much are capable of underhandedly taking advantage of the ignorance of the media.
I talk about them poorly because they are acting poorly. They do discredit to the US Navy and make us look like uneducated fools to those in the Scientific Community and technical industries, hurting us from getting high-paying jobs after our service time us up, just so they can make a buck.
I also wouldn’t consider their “doctors” to be very high in regard, either. I’ve seen many of them, who haven’t even done a residency, try to refute claims of civilian doctors who’d been practicing for longer than the Navy doctors had been alive. Some of them are absolutely fantastic. Some of them… I honestly feel better self medicating and using WebMD much of the time.

Here is the thing I personally know several people who have all the same “mystery” symptoms that doctors can not explain. Not all of them are involved in the lawsuit. What do they have to gain? Are there some people involved in the lawsuit who are jumping on the bandwagon? Maybe. I am sure that there are many who are really looking for help when they are getting none from the DOD. Is radiation the cause of their symptoms? I don’t know for sure but I also know it can’t be absolutely ruled out. Could they have been exposed to some other toxin that we don’t even know about? Maybe. What I do know is that there are certain things that can not be faked. Blood tests and MRIs can’t be faked. People with 17 years service losing their careers and doctors can’t explain what is happening. That can’t be faked.
In addition, in many comments you have made on this subject, you attempt to present yourself as having firsthand knowledge. You were not there. Your ship was ordered out of port and down to Sasebo Japan because they did not want you becoming dirty.
Again your treatment of your fellow sailors is disgusting.

“Mystery” symptoms is a terrible argument. Don’t blame things on a buzzword, and don’t trust a doctor who likely has never done a residency to be the end-all-source when WebMD is likely a better argument.
Many of the complaints include ridiculous claims like “back pain.” In such situations, you CAN rule it out.
If it’s past two months, you CAN rule out radiation sickness. Other than that, you’re limited to cancer and heart problems, pretty much. Blood issues disappear after the blood gets replaced by the body, and those take a whopping 100Rem to occur. The sailors on the Reagan got three thousand times less than that.
Fact of the matter is that, per the dose investigations, no one got more than ~30 mrem. I’ve gotten that much in one maintenance item. It’s not much. Newer studies have shown that up to 1Rem can actually be beneficial to the human body.

My ship was already dirty. We were ordered out of port because of politics and promises made to the Japanese.

Hi David, It is Memorial Day and as such Thank you for your service! Last year I read that there is potentially a very serious risk when the “leaning reactor building” collapses. Are you in anyway aware of what they were talking about a “leaning building?” If I remember the article said there were “fuel rods” stored in the building and would be thrown together if the building were to collapse (the article made it sound both ominous and imminent but we know how the media can hype up a story). Can you, or anyone else, shed light on what they might be talking about? Thanks from an old, retired, USAF type.

Reactor 4 was struck by some hydrogen explosions during the meltdown of the nearby reactor 3 unit, which was active at the time of the 3-11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Ironically, reactor 4 was under maintenance, and all the reactor core fuel bundles were stored in the spent fuel pool. And though the reactor was not active, and thus did not melt down, the damage inflicted by the hydrogen that blew back from reactor 3 caused quite some damage.

The claims that the reactor 4 building was leaning were highly exaggerated, and while the powerful earthquake did shake the building quite a bit, the building did not move much.

How can we be sure of this last statement? Because there is a pool of water inside of the building, and it’s very simple to measure the tilt of a building when a large pool full of water is inside the building. You just use a yardstick from the pool edge and measure the water level on two opposite sides, and there is your answer!

In short, yes, there is a minimum tilt, but not severe. At any rate, TEPCO has decided to build an additional structure that did not sustain its weight on the ever-so-slightly tilted building, but it’s rather self-supporting. Supported by this structure there are a number of large cranes used to move the spent fuel in the pool, out to a central storage pool.

This movement of fuel bundles has been ongoing for a few months now, and everything has been just perfect, and at this time about 60% of the fuel has been moved out of the “tilted” building into the central storage pool.

In a nutshell, once again the anti-nuclear people exaggerated news, and the media loves fear, uncertainty and doubt, particularly around nuclear, a theme which is understood by very few. Unfortunately.

Thanks Luca, I’m glad to know the truth (vs. the false scare) of the leaning reactor building because I had used the scenario at the end of my second fictional book, “Immortal Relations, Love and War” http://amzn.com/B00A4IEHL6 as a danger my characters could overcome.

THERE HAS BEEN A FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR DISASTER
at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster involves (that is ONGOING damage to the environment 3.5 years and counting, from THREE nuclear reactors 1, 2 and 3 AND
TWO Spent Fuel Pools 3 and 4 (at minimum)

Please keep in mind that ICRP underestimates health risk. Take what they consider the risk than mltiplby by 150-600 times for the proven risk assessment. ECRR euradcom.org and Tondel (Sweden) methods are far more accurate.

thank you, sir. you are the warm, sunny island of wisdom and reason in an otherwise cold, sloppy, and ever churning sea of raw sewage called “news”. you are appreciated. and thank you for your service to our country.

pg 245: to
Chairman Jaczko, Jim Trapp in Tokyo: “have Admiral from Navy base @
Yokosuka [south of Tokyo] believes he has measured with
instrumentation TEDE, he’s estimating a TEDE of 1.5 mR/r…. “he
believes he has thyroid doses of of 10millirem/hr” “And I believe
a contaminant, microcuries, levels of 7e-9

pg 246-7:
‘this location is 188 miles from site” “direct measurements …
confirmed on multiple instruments, he believes it’s due to a wind
shift. … we did have a wind shift to the S-SW recently and he
believes that the plume coming out of the plant, then, would be
causing this. … the wind will shift back out to sea in about 10
hours, which would give you a total dose of, he believes, about 10
millirem before the wind shift (back)… 10 X 1.5/hr is what he’s
doing.”
[Admiral on USS Reagan and @ Yokosuka both wanted to get people out of the plume they were in- NRC FOIA docs]

Great contribution. As a former Radiological Safety Officer for the largest U.S Training base for the Army, I applaud you factual information. I have a lifetime dose as an “Occupationally exposed” person and it is so low, but medically registered, it is less than all the Dentists visits people will undergo for several years having their teeth or jaws put their X-Ray for determining cavities.

137-43 Jaczko sums up… everyone agrees that the situation won’t improve. ‘3 reactors out of control and possibly up to SIX spent-fuel pools’ …
Jaczko wants to inform the Ambassador [Tokyo]
and White House to evacuate U.S. Citizens

– back to Chuck Casto to make that recommendation. He has to first talk to the White House. Admiral Donald agrees.

Bill Borchardt: if this happened in
U.S. Our recommendation would be 50 miles.

Then we would be handing out KI as well. We don’t have enough.

they are bulldozing under… high
rad fields will get it down 70 %….

“and given that rad field, what
is causing that? … lead me to believe that what you have ut there
is fuel in the environment” ‘and there you had the spent-fuel
pool that boiled down. You had a zirc/water reaction. You built up
this steam… a certain percentage of the top bare… had an
explosion… who knows what got blown out into the yard? ….
‘they reported the rad field was 20 – 30 rems”

As for spent fuel pools, 50 miles is a starting point. If spent fuel goes, would have to widen the recommendation. “start
moving toward a larger evacuation”
[spent fuel pool 3 determined to be gone, spent fuel pool 4 assessed to have burned at least 9 hours]

There are hundreds of documents in that FOIA link. Could you narrow it down to which document or admiral, or (better yet) if the dose ratings were actually potentially harmful? An admiral calling with concerns means that he did not know what to do, it does not mean that there was any real danger.
The admiral and radiation discussions I could find included this transcript of a call (http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1300/ML13008A108.pdf) where the technical expert repeatedly discusses the data in terms of the “limits of detectability” of the instruments (meaning it is so small an amount of radiation that they can hardly measure it) and how the levels are ’10 times lower than would require initial EPA actions’. Not very concerning to me or the admirals.
(side note: the transcription company incorrectly writes “detectability” as “deductibility”, so if you want to text search, look for the second word)

I’ve tried to get Marukushka France to provide details before, but I’m still waiting. Come on France, pony up! On another article you claimed the FOIA documents say that 5 people where killed by the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown. Please point to the document that claims to this (and not a simple link to a huge set of documents).

you have a bad memory and i’ve provided the links to the memos that recounted the five Japanese/Tepco employees. Their deaths were in the first 24 hours – documented in 16 March 11 memo. Add four GE employees out of 40 that helped out, that had exposure and were spirited away for State Dept to get them back ASAP… whether they had to be hospitalized or not, no further mention… but the citations are here among the many comments.

Check the articles on ENENEWS about sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan who have horrible health effects which they believe came from Fukushima radiation.

Here are some of the headlines:

” TV: Many U.S. sailors are suffering serious symptoms of radiation sickness after being contaminated during Fukushima nuclear disaster — USS Ronald Reagan was as close as a mile away as reactors melted down ”

” U.S. Navy Sailor: They had to remove three layers of skin off my hands and arms after Fukushima exposure — Treated almost as if I had the plague ”

” Press Conference: People were trying to commit suicide aboard USS Reagan during Fukushima mission — Some tried to get off ship — It was living in fear every day, it was horrible “

Oh, “Frank”, just more name calling from you. Doesn’t help your public personal does it? But the list of abusive language you have used is pretty extensive, so what is one more slam from you.

Who owns and runs a news “aggregator” is just as important as who runs your blogspot. You have a history there that has undermined any credibility you might have hoped for. But it gives you something to do, huh? Cheers.

“pro nuclear pr UN agency the IAEA ”
Perhaps these days.
Sanctions have wrested control away from Non-WMD states promoting nonproliferation and disarmament ( Bu$h’s Axis of Evil ) who wanted the IAEA as a vehicle to certify their compliance with the NPT. The largest Western WMD holder ( thousands of ICBM MIRVs ) regularly flogs the danger of unarmed countries getting such – while it renews its arsenal. Prior to Iraq the IAEA said there was no nuke WMD in Iraq – and Cheney’s office ‘blew’ the identity of the CIA officer manning the middle east nuclear threat desk – Valerie Plame / Wilson.

The NPT concept itself is a fraud in execution and the IAEA is financially controlled by ‘the West’ – so I am certainly not quibbling about it being a shill. For who is a different matter. This sort of incident is related to nuclear power only as a means to cause harm. http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1186.html
IRAN’S NUCLEAR ENERGY PROGRAM
Part V: From the United States Offering Iran Uranium Enrichment Technology to Suggestions for Creating Catastrophic Industrial Failure

The nuclear 5 created the UN security council. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power and those gov basicily merged. Every president has promoted nuclear power and of course tried to limit the spread of nuclear weapons (except to Israel?). That’s probably why they merged the agencies into the DOE. I don’t see the contradiction between their role as nuclear power pr agencies and nuclear weapons tech control. It’s impossible, but it’s not a contradiction.

I call BS. The USA ended building of nuclear power plants in the 70’s and 80’s. It wasn’t until around 2011-2012 that they considered building again.
With regard to Israel, consider that Israel is 1/20th the size of California. Now consider that virtually EVERY country surrounding it has sworn to kill ALL Israeli’s, drive them into the sea and take their land. Now consider that all the Arab nations took all the families that immigrated to them from the early /mid 1900’s and forced them to leave, telling them go create a Palestinian nation in Israel. They created the Palestinian problem.
Now consider that it was the UN that created Israel in the first place then LIMITED thier autonomy. Then consider the 7 day war….and the other wars. Israel was attacked and took all the land almost to the nile in 7 days. Under NORMAL international policy and historical rights Israel would have been allowed to KEEP ALL the land acquired as a result of being attacked…but the UN made them give it all back.
No, it is time to STOP blaming Israel for any of this. They are just trying to survive. If anyone’s the historical title to Israel it is the Israelis…..under our current method of determination and chain of legal title. In fact the title to Israel was written and perfected almost 6000 years ago. One of the OLDEST chains of TRUE TITLE in the world. The title was to the “Children of Israel and their descendants for ALL TIME” meaning the Hebrews who are the Israeli Jews of today. Such a title can not be removed by war or disaster technically, it exists for ALL TIME under all western law.

Um.. no the ambulance chasers are looking for a payday, see the Navy official report “There is no objective evidence that the sailors … experienced radiation exposures that would result in an increase in the expected number of radiogenic diseases over time,” Woodson wrote. “The estimated radiation doses for all individuals in the Operation Tomodachi registry, including sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan, were very small and well below levels associated with adverse medical conditions.”

Did you know that there is a legal remedy of charter revocation that Attorneys General can invoke against corporations that continue to act against the public welfare? I wonder how endangering the public welfare with continued operations that radiate the water, food chain and public would be considered…?

Interesting that CFACT is reportedly funded predominantly by climate denialists and Exxon and Koch funded front groups that promote the continued burning of fossil fuels. Now CFACT is defending/promoting nuclear. They actively disrupt climate negotiations and repeatedly attack clean energy development. There’s truth out there somewhere, but I doubt it can be found on this site.http://www.desmogblog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow

A complete and utter lie. Greenpeace does not accept donations from corporations or governments. Your mendacity personifies the duplicitous culture of a nuclear industry that has already nuked the climate – and that’s official.

Greenpeace receives its funding from individual supporters and foundations. Greenpeace screens all major donations in order to ensure it does not receive unwanted
donations. The organization does not accept money from governments, intergovernmental organizations, political
parties or corporations. (Wikipedia).

You have failed to substantiate your accusations with documented evidence. You invented the fabrication that GP has never turned down a donation. You are a liar.

BS, they take money from any and every source available to them. I am pretty sure that they even submit proposals for studies paid for by the US taxpayers (grants and other opportunistic incomes from government).
It all depends on your definition of “donation”.

However, the facts that CFACT report are scientifically valid. Some conclusions are preferential. HOWEVER, when it comes to climate control believers and those involved in the carbon credit cycle (the true original root of this movement) it is about power, control and TAXATION.
If you were well read and intelligent enough to read between the lines your skepticism would be reserved against climate change organizations. Instead you prefer to spout their proliferation of ideologies that are unfounded in science and unsupportable with regard to the technology and true harm to this planet.
The permanent environmental harm, economic and ecological cost of even mining rare earth metals for photovoltaics when compared to the return in power generated over the lifetime of the product is a loss.
The amount of energy and long term return of large wind turbines is highly questionable at best. However in SOME areas the environmental verses energy return for SMALL SCALE wind power is quite acceptable. Example, SW Texas and some to much of the midwest can support farm and facility sized wind generators without exceptional ecological loss at environmentally acceptable levels.
My background in designing, building and installing wind turbine generators makes me reasonably well versed and intelligent relative to the issues. So don’t try and go there with me.
The real problem, is that UNTIL the federal government no longer provides SUBSIDIES for photovoltaics and wind power generation we as a society will continue to believe that there is long term benefit. Without the subsidies those technologies will fail commercially in an instant!! The subsidies were to be short term and then go away to allow the BIRTH of industry. Instead the Industry is sucking the TIT of the people for nearly 40 years!

Rather difficult to indict natural scientific forces. But those engaging in reckless industrial activities that pose unacceptable risks to human/environmental health…yes, they should be held to account, including full cost accounting for their polluting and other harm they inflict/offload onto taxpayers and future generations. Don’ t you think so?

Depends. Define “reckless industrial activities”. If you are suggesting that any industrial accident qualifies, I would argue the point. If you are limiting your point to genuine and intentional abuse of safety and environmental law, we agree. But before discussing the nuclear industry specifically, I need to know who was harmed and how; because the truth is that safety and environmental record of the nuclear industry outside of Chernobyl has been exemplary and unmatched by most industries.

Statistically, nuclear appears to be a safer energy option. The difficulty is that it only takes one accident to be catastrophic. With cleaner alternatives that carry less risk, nuclear (at least older nuclear technology) should be decommissioned. We should be testing our soil/water/food suply for increased radiation from Fukushima but it is reported that the government refuses to do so (or report it at least).

How catastrophic? Nuclear plants are physically unable to create a nuclear explosion. The worst case scenario is a meltdown like at Fukushima and that hurt no one and was caused by a monumental earthquake/tsunami. As the author of the article said, the owners suffered a huge financial loss but that was about it. The only other possibility is a radiation leak of some major proportion (minor leaks cause no harm) and we have never, ever seen that in over sixty years of nuclear power operation and aren’t likely to see one with the safety systems our plants are required to have. Read the article again. It’s written by a true expert in this field. There is no need for any costly testing because radiation levels emitted from that plant were inconsequential. I would be very happy to have a nuclear plant in my back yard if I can benefit from the inexpensive power it will produce. The radiation fears are irrational.

You’re right that regulations make plant construction costs astronomical. But in spite of that, the cost per kilowatt of power generated after considering all costs is considerably less than the cost of that kilowatt from natural gas, coal, wind, or solar. Nuclear power is relatively cheap in spite of the roadblocks. My numbers are about three years old now, but very roughly a megawatt of nuclear power was produced for about $25, natural gas about $30, coal about $35 – $40, and wind higher yet. Solar was not only about as high as wind, but because it does not produce at night was limited to being a supplemental power source.

Just ask the citizens of Florida. Progress Energy was to build a new plant. They got approved costs to be paid by users (users who have no choice at all). The foundation work was done and it was found structurally a failure. That meant abandonment of the project.
Meanwhile the government allowed Progress Energy to continue its profits charging the entire cost fo the failed project to the consumer instead of the corporation and its shareholders.
I have a HUGE problem with this ethic. There must be accountability at all times. If the shareholders are not held accountable then the officers are NOT held accountable..this means that the citizens are defrauded.
Meanwhile the officers and engineers even get to say that they worked on a nuclear project making them more valuable to industry, instead of UNEMPLOYABLE as they should be.

The references people make to Chernobyl are uninformed at best and stupid at worst. Chernobyl was built by a nation with zero regard for safety or human life. It had no safety systems and not even a containment dome! It was built as a disaster waiting to happen which is the exact opposite of every other nuclear facility in the free world. No I don’t want a plant built by the old USSR in my back yard and maybe not today’s Russia, but was referring to ANY plant built by the US or most responsible nations. Those I would be happy to have. Silly comments by irrational people get tiresome.

Due to YOUR convenient neglect of Chernobyl, you attempted to portray ALL reactors as “Safe”, when REALITY has shown that is NOT the case, and due to spread of this technology to other countries, such as CHINA, IRAN, INDIA, etc. we cannot control their standards, AND here at home! cost-cutting measures may result in future disasters, as imported parts and foreign workers expand their roles in our reactors! Counterfeit parts, for example, are a GROWING PROBLEM, as is the fact that most of our infrastructure, including these reactors, has limited protection from DELIBERATE sabotage! such as skilled TERRORISTS might plan! possibly with INSIDE assistance! (A SINGLE gunman, armed with a 50 caliber machine gun, can QUICKLY disable a multi megawatt electric substation, provided he understands the vulnerability of the transformers and switchgear, and takes them out in correct sequence, resulting damage could EASILY take MONTHS to restore! Our security has been based upon protecting against those that fear apprehension or death, and have little knowledge of such systems, but TODAY, there are those, trained and backed by fanatics, that fear ONLY failing to accomplish the destructive act! Cameras and alarms do little to STOP this type attack, they only let us know who, and/or how, it was done, after it is TOO LATE! There ARE groups with rocket propelled grenades, armor piercing bullets, and other materials and weapons that can render a substation unusable in less than 5 minutes! (Less than ONE minute is easily possible!)

You don’t have a clue. Our domestic nuclear power industry is, by far, the most regulated, most inspected industry in America. It is also one of the most secure. Furthermore, there has been not one death or illness domestically resulting from radiation or similar accidents. Not one. That is in spite of the numerous deaths and injuries in almost every other industry one can name. The safety record of our domestic nuclear power cannot be matched by ANY other industry, and that’s a simple fact. Using a gunman shooting at an electrical substation has nothing at all to do with nuclear power; meaning you have no logical argument. You are making untrue and unsubstantiated remarks that prove I’m arguing with someone without any knowledge of the subject matter. Too bad and good-bye.

For YOUR information, the NRC states that a Robert D. Peabody DIED, of acute RADIATION POISONING, in connection with the Wood a River Jct, nuclear facility of Charleston, Rhode Island! (Accidental criticality incident, in 1964). You may be highly educated, and very knowledgeable, but the “sign of a FOOL is someone that thinks they know it ALL! –Many PhD types fall into that classification, and have little “Real World” dirty hands type experience, thus, fail to realize fallacies and weaknesses of their carefully calculated solutions to problems! There have been OTHER reactor related, but non nuclear exposure related fatalities, with THREE occurring in Idaho, in 1961, at the SL-1 reactor, in Idaho falls! The USA has had quite a few incidents involving its power producing reactors, but SO FAR, we have been lucky to avoid all but one reportable or immediate death from radiation!

Hmm… So you are using 50 year old incidents to prove your ‘current day’ scenario? One death – how did he get exposed? You didn’t say.
Three other (separate ?) incidents and one facility three years before that; right? Non-nuclear, you said. So that means there was no, Zero, Zip, chances of a radiation leak. Right?
Three-Mile Island? A burp, and the Safety features built into the system worked exactly as they were supposed to – No radiation leakage. The power plant is still in operation. I can tell; because Philadelphia still has electricity flowing to it and through it.

plants in the US are reported to be leaking and this for quite a while, for ex. one in texas … as several others have similar issues … fires, gas escapes, cracks in the vessels and so on … Even the one in my neighbourhood was shut down cuz of found cracks in the concrete … its everywhere!! no sufficient technology to handle it properly yet… geothermal energy can solve all of these problems and get us away from fossil fuels for good! still 80 procent of all world power is still generated by fossils!!!!

I read some of your comments and it seems that you have lost your perspective. Russians aren’t really any different from USA citizens, there may be some cultural differences but it all balances out to a tie (they are not mindless drones who work towards their death without concern)… Russian nuclear facilities have at this point released more radioactive material to the atmosphere than the USA ones, but the russians haven’t nuked civilians repeatedly to “prevent the death of innocent people” (yet).
It is very unwise to believe russians had zero regard for safety or human life. There must be a guy like you in Russia who justifies soviet power plants because the USA was racing to nuke the USSR to oblivion, so things had to be done hastily, and he wants the USA to be disarmed because they can’t be trusted with weapons; doesn’t he also make sense, applying your logic?

You jest. You are saying that the old Soviet Union with the millions of Russians murdered at the hands of some of the most brutal dictators in history built their nuclear facilities with all of the safety precautions that western governments design into ours? Chernobyl didn’t even have a containment dome! It was a disaster waiting to happen, and sadly it did. The old Soviet Union proved over and over a very high lack of regard for human life and those morons who keep using Chernobyl as an excuse to prevent the sensible use of nuclear power need to wise up. Nuclear power is cleaner, safer, and cheaper per megawatt of power produced than ANY other alternative today.

No, but Chernobyl was a very early design and was designed primarily to produce material for bombs. It had a number of critical design flaws that made it particularly poorly designed for power generation, such as a reverse reaction to control rods being inserted the first meter, and as it got hotter the reactor actually produced more power, No large western power reactor ever had or has these design flaws. Chernoblys containment vessel was also lacking by western standards. No reactor of this type remains in operation. Now it maybe that modern reactors have a systemic flaw just as dangerous that has not yet been identified, but i think i would still prefer to live next to a nuclear station than a large coal fired plant.

an industry insider has never ever had a conflict of interest at anytime in history right? wrong. at least in the u.s., industry presidents, ceo’s, etc are notoriously appointed top dog in government agencies like the FDA, USDA, etc etc. to police the same industry that they have stocks and ownership in. I don’t believe anything that man said in his article. His comments are totally and completely dismissive of anything more than a tear drop in the ocean. His opinions have no merit, cited with absolutely no factual evidence, and certainly no scientific study on radiation levels throughout the pacific. Complete nonsense.

I suggest you remember that we are all surrounded by radiation every minute of every day. It’s a natural thing that cannot be avoided and generally causes no harm. One domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles exposes the passenger to more radiation than a nuclear plant employee is exposed to in a year. There is a completely irrational fear of radiation caused by a lot of fear-mongering since the 1950s and promoted by the mainstream media for all these years. I rely on a perfectly reliable expert for my sources and am confident that the author of this article got it right. The only nuclear accident in history of any serious consequence was Chernobyl and that entire incident was the fault of a government with no concern at all for safety or life.

Tell that to the guy that just lost 30 of his 40 horses due to some strange?! unknown disease… tell that to the thousands of children coming up with thyroid cancer in the last months. Fish started dying massively from the beginning! and now washing up by the millions … but no, it has nothing to do with the radiation right? Chernobyl poison cloud, which was followed on the news by some, killed almost all of the sheep in Schotland at the time!!

Horses die from unknown diseases all the time, they are quite fragile animals and the thyroid cancer thing has been shown to be another example of the hysteria syndrome, the numbers being constructed by over testing and diagnosing. Once again the victims there were the children who had their thyroids removed unnecessarily and now have to take pills all their lives. Fish washing up….Oh please!

I don’t know why you are living in denial about nuclear plants. But you definitely are.
You say that no one was hurt. HOW THE F**K CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT;? Are you paralyzed from the neck up?

What about the workers on the plant that sacrificed them selves, to stop the disaster from getting even worse?

If you have read the report from UNSCEAR, where it says: “The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), released a report on the Fukushima accident April 2, 2014. It stated that the scientists have found no evidence to support the idea that the nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011 will lead to an
increase in cancer rates or birth defects”.

Well, then I have one thing to tell you: You can’t trust a single national committee in the USA. They are all corrupt. And they will tell the public exactly what the company who is paying them, want’s them to say. But if you check elsewhere you might find the truth. Like this:

Where it says that there where 1232 fatalities caused by radiation from the accident (nuclear-related deaths).

The term “nuclear-related” means a death that does not result directly from radiation exposure but is caused by a disease later caused by that exposure. Indeed, it is radiation-related diseases — including
cancer, tumors and genetic damage — that often cause the bulk of health problems and fatalities in cases of radiation exposure.

One of the diseases particularly expected to show an uptick after the Fukushima disaster is thyroid cancer, because radioactive iodine from nuclear disasters tends to concentrate in the thyroid gland. An estimated 6,000 children contracted thyroid cancer following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

It typically takes four to five years for most nuclear-related
thyroid cancers to manifest, and as that window approaches many Fukushima parents believe that their children are already showing symptoms. Fukushima officials
have tested approximately 300,000 children and have turned up 100 cases of the disease, in contrast to the pre-disaster rate of one or two per million children.

Yes there have been no radiation related deaths as a result of Fukushima… There have been many fear related deaths due to Fukushima, which makes it hard to believe that some people will continue to amplify the fear without regard for consequences.

Arnold “Arnie” Gundersen is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1971), with a B.S. cum laude and a GPA of 3.74 in nuclear engineering, holds a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, and gained an Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship (1972). Gundersen has more than 40 years of nuclear power engineering experience. Gundersen holds a nuclear safety patent, was a licensed reactor operator, and is a former nuclear industry senior vice president. During his nuclear power industry career, Gundersen also managed and coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants in the US.

Gundersen inflates his resume.
The “reactor” he is licensed to operate is a 100 watt university demonstration reactor.
He touts himself as “chief scientist” at Fairewinds, which is just his own company consisting of him and his wife.
However appeals to authority aside…
What is worse than his exaggeration of his qualifications is that he makes claims that defy the laws of physics.
When these mistakes are pointed out, he simply continues on spouting his nonsense.
You can believe whomever you wish, but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously if you parrot Gundersen.

“greenthinker2012” is one of the anonymous pro-nuclear paid shills that I have previously denounced as part of the mob of vicious trolls that roam the internet spreading misinformation and abuse. They are just the tip of the iceberg of a vast propaganda campaign by the nuclear industry to prop up public opinion after the Fukushima disaster.

The reality is that the nuclear industry has been on the decline for nearly 20 years now, and the downward trend is accelerating, despite a pathetic last minute attempt by the nuclear industry to grab at the global climate crisis to justify its existence.

Ironically enough, and except in Germany where the vox populi has decided on the shutdown of all existing nuclear power plants and similarly in Japan because of the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Fukushima, it is not the anti-nuclear movement that is forcing the electricity generation sector to give up on nuclear, it is the banks: considering only the financial aspects of utility-scale electricity generation, nuclear cannot compete with either hydro, wind, solar, geo-thermal or a number of other renewables, despite the massive hidden government subsidies and never-accounted-for negative externalities of the nuclear industry as a whole, which are left for future generations to deal with.

It is not just that renewables are in general more economical than nuclear in terms of cost per kWh. When examining the financial viability of multi-billion dollars electricity generation projects, banks also consider the massive upfront capital investment required for the construction of a nuclear power plant, the guarantees for the loans that this implies, the extraordinary costs of decommissioning of nuclear reactors, the risks of nuclear accidents which are reflected in insurance rates, the problems and huge expenses with nuclear waste management and disposal, the long lead times for approving and building new nuclear power plants, the rising costs of nuclear plant maintenance and nuclear fuel supplies, etc.

Banks also look at the cash flow from nuclear vs. renewables: bringing a solar or wind farm online and starting earning money from it can take as little as a year. A nuclear power plant can take up to twelve years to start operating at full capacity. Any financial analyst taking a look at the projected cash flows from different alternative projects will immediately rule out nuclear. And imagine how the costs of wind and solar and storage will have come down after 12 years, bringing down with them the cost of electricity per kWh from these clean, zero emissions renewable sources. Again, that contrasts with the negative track record of huge cost overruns for most nuclear reactors recently built.

Financial analysts are also immune to the simplistic propaganda and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) mongering of the nuclear industry, because their spreadsheets crunch real numbers from real data, not empty promises like “too cheap to meter”, “thorium could save the world” or “Gen IV reactors are just around the corner”.

The nuclear industry now has a single economically viable exit strategy: the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities (the Hanford site decommissioning, for example, is expected to cost over $100 billion by 2100). Let’s see how their propaganda adapts to this new reality. How about a new slogan, like “We clean up our mess so you don’t have to deal with it (for the next million years).” A bit long, but to the point.

I am also one of the group he named, of course he has no proof of his false accusations. I know for a fact he is lying about me, I post under my real name, my posts are not private, my Facebook account is not private. I know for a fact I am NOT paid to post, not told to post yet this “Andre” posts his lies anyway. I am not part of some conspiracy, but I do have over 35 years of nuclear experience and I agree with almost all of Greenthinker2012’s posts. I have yet to read anything of substance from “Andre” his vitriol and accusations are without merit.

Now, now, Lester, calm down. Anybody with a tiny bit of common sense will check your comments history on Disqus and verify that 3500+ comments focused on pro-nuclear propaganda, under the name of “Michael Mann” (a leading climate scientist and I mean, the REAL Michael Mann, not you, Lester), are the work of either a paid shill or a very sick individual indeed. Plus the fact that you immediately upvote all your own comments under the guise of a different Disqus identity…
Btw, since you have previously threatened to sue me for exposing you as a nuclear industry paid shill, when is the letter from your attorneys coming?

As you know, I post under my given name and have no alias. When you prove yourself to be a blatant liar with every post how do you expect anyone to take you seriously? I told you I am not a litigious person, I don’t have a lawyer, but if there is one reading this who would like to take the case, I am willing to listen, contact me. Thank you!

Lester, I think we should focus from now on a discussion of the financial viability of the Ginna single-reactor power plant. This is a 45+ years old nuclear power plant using outdated technology that supplies its customers with electricity at one of the most expensive rates in the US, way above in fact the rates from renewables such as wind or solar. Care to provide some data about it?

The R. E. Ginna nuclear power plant is the longest running in the USA with more actual hours or full power operation than any other. It has completed all of it’s Fukushima upgrades and has operated at a capacity factor over 95% for more than 10 years, it is ranked in the top quartile in almost every metric. My job is to calibrate and maintain the equipment which ensures it remains safe, I live within 3 miles of Ginna with my family. You care about money, I care about safety and the environment, I guess we each have our priorities,

How many tons of spent fuel are right now stored in the spent fuel pool at Ginna, and how many tons are in dry storage? What is the total amount of plutonium in that spent fuel?
Did you work at Ginna when it had the accident in 1982 which released radioactive contaminants in the atmosphere?
What is the average dose of radiation the workers at Ginna get per year? What was the dose they got in 1982?
What is the rate at which Exelon sells the electricity from Ginna, in $/kWh? When is the next shutdown due for maintenance or fuel reload? Where do you get your capacity factor figures from?

I am not a spokesperson, I cannot divulge plant specific information without authorization. I did not get hired at Ginna until January 1988. The tube rupture at Ginna released minimal radioactive material because there was no fuel element failure, the relatively clean primary water went through a steam generator tube into the secondary when the tube was damaged from foreign material left in the system. Here is a pretty good account of the accidet “The Ginna Nuclear Power Plant was the site of a minor nuclear accident when, on January 25, 1982, a small amount of radioactive steam leaked into the air after a steam-generator tube ruptured. The leak which lasted 93 minutes led to the declaration of a site emergency. The rupture was caused by a small pie-pan-shaped object left in the steam generator during an outage. This was not the first time a tube rupture had occurred at an American reactor but following on so closely behind the Three Mile Island accident caused considerable attention to be focused on the incident at the Ginna plant. In total, 485.3 curies of noble gas and 1.15 millicuries of iodine-131 were released to the environment. ” http://nuclear-powerplants.blogspot.com/2011/01/robert-e-ginna-nuclear-power-plant.html

And here is a different account of the accident: “THREE MILE ISLAND almost happened again at nine o’clock in the morning on January 25 Just outside of Rochester, New York. a tube ruptured in the steam generator of the Robert E. Ginna nuclear power plant. allowing radioactive water to come into contact with the cooling system. The water vaporized and escaped–still radioactive into the atmosphere. As the plant’s technicians belatedly tried to lower the water pressure to reduce the leak, a valve stuck, pressure dropped too rapidly and the water in the reactor began to boil. If a backup valve hadn’t opened, a “bubble” of steam would have formed within the reactor, possibly uncovering the core–exactly what happened at Three Mile Island in March of 1979. But because the Ginna valve did open, the accident goes down in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as only a “serious failure.” Rochester Gas-and Electric assured Ginna’s neighbors that only “minimal” radioactivity had escaped, and set about persuading the State Public Service Commission to make customers pay for the six-month cleanup.”

Neither account states exactly how long the reactor remained shutdown following the accident.

Yes, trying to capitalize on the fame of Three Mile Island to sell more advertising makes sense. If is a very big word, if the sun collapsed yesterday, we all would have died. It was cold and there was a heavy snow fall at the time and most of the contamination fell onsite, Surveys were taken in the surrounding areas.

The next time a 45-year old valve gets stuck or a 45-year old tube leaks at the site where you work, you may change your opinion about how safe your work environment is. In any case, here is a study under the umbrella of the WHO about the cancer/leukemia risks of nuclear industry workers due to low level radiation exposure: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/16/radiation-and-cancer-risks-of-leukemia-in-nuclear-workers-more-than-double-previous-estimate/
I am sorry to say, but you are much more exposed than you previously believed. For your own good, I would suggest you immediately give up on your pro-nuclear propaganda and begin advocating for the shutdown of the Ginna power plant and the building of the equivalent electricity generation capacity with renewables, as well as grid improvements and efficiency measures. All of which would bring down the price of electricity in your area, and simultaneously create thousands of jobs.

Um, The tube rupture happened in 1982…. I know how safe my work environment is, what on Earth makes you think YOU know better? Please list your qualifications, I’ve asked you before and so far you don’t seem to have any… Where do you work? How is your OSHA record? It’s safer to work at a nuclear power plant than at a financial institution according to OSHA statistics. I know you can’t trust OSHA because it’s their job, they are part of the “safety industry” they are just “safety shills”

Is there a reason why you linked to a summary of the INWORKS radiation study in Counterpunch rather than a scientific journal? It’s just that the author – a mildly odd anti-nuclear activist called Iain Fairlie (who believes the reason mainstream scientists generally ignore his work is because it is so damned good) – rather overstates both the strength of the study and what its conclusions mean.

Let’s look instead at a proper summary in a scientific publication (with a fascinating discussion in the comments section where the editor responds):

In this study of 308 297 nuclear workers, spending an average of 27 years in the industry, they discovered an extra 30 cases of leukaemia. That’s 0.0097% of the workforce studied. It represents a 6% increase in a very rare disease. (This is actually such a small increase that it is debatable whether it is actually significant, but let’s assume it is reflective of reality). To quote from Nature:

“It is a solid, unusually large study of individuals exposed to very low doses of ionizing radiation,” says epidemiologist Jørgen Olsen, director of the Danish Cancer Society Research Center in Copenhagen. The finding implies that some cases of leukaemia will even be caused by a high level of natural background radiation, he adds, “though the increased risk for an individual is going to be vanishingly small”.

ICRP recommendations, which most national radiation-protection agencies follow, already call for monitoring of individuals whose annual exposure is likely to exceed 6 mSv. They restrict exposure to 20 mSv annually over 5 years, with a maximum of 50 mSv in any one year. Researchers found that 531 of the workers died from leukaemia during the average 27 years they spent in the industry; the data suggest that 30 of those deaths could be attributed to the radiation. Even in this large study, there was no direct evidence that workers who had accumulated extremely low doses of radiation (below a total of 50 mSv) had an increased risk of leukaemia, says Olsen. But a mathematical extrapolation of the data suggests that each accumulation of 10 mSv of exposure raised a worker’s risk of leukaemia by around 3%, compared to the average risk of the group of workers in the study.

Let’s compare that to the death impact of fossil fuels without even considering climate change: a study by James Hansen, someone I understand you admire:

In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.

As I have pointed out to you before, the WHO suggests that there are already 150,000 deaths a year from climate change, with serious scientific opinion speculating on the role of climate change in exacerbating the current murderous conflict in the Middle East.

It’s all a matter of choices. Which approach causes fewer deaths and less damage to the biosphere?

Another pompous but vacuous comment by paid shill “Sam Gilman” https://disqus.com/by/samgilman/ directly copy-pasted from the “cheat sheet” software provided by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the US lobbying and propaganda organization setup by the nuclear industry to the tune of $50 million per year(!). I have previously determined that “Sam Gilman” is – in addition to being a nuclear industry paid shill – a racist. And by principle, I have no business and no arguments with racist persons.

Er, no, the only copy-pasting I did was from the leading scientific journal Nature and the website of NASA. I’m not paid by anyone to comment, nor do I have any connection to any energy companies or lobby groups let alone access to some mysterious software they have that probably doesn’t exist. People are also free to go over my commenting history with a fine-tooth comb to look for the slightest scrap of racism.

What you’re doing, André, is failing (quite spectacularly) to face up to the flaws in your argument. Attacking me with fantasy accusations is meaningless: you need to attack James Hansen, you need to attack the editors at Nature, you need to attack the World Health Organisation and you need to attack the authors of the study you were just so favourably citing. Well, not so much attack all these people as address what they say in a calm and intelligent manner.

Would you like to have another go, and this time address the evidence I presented?

You have a gross conceptual error, if Ginna shuts down, about 500 well paying jobs leave the area, contractors come in to dismantle the plant. The town of Ontario losses over half of it’s tax base, all the local eateries, gas stations etc lose half their customers, the volunteer fire department loses half it’s volunteers. A gas fired plant in another state gets built, more emissions are created, any local economic benefit goes to a different locale. Ontario NY and most of the surrounding area suffers, the environment suffers, the employees suffer, no matter how you try to spin it, that is the result.

Replacing the Ginna nuclear power plant with decentralized renewables will generate thousands more jobs than the 500 “well paying jobs” that you mention. The town of Ontario will increase its tax base, all the local firms that you listed will see their client numbers and revenues increase and everybody will be better off with clean air, cheaper electricity and without any radiation accident risks. In any case, the Ginna nuclear plant will be shut down sooner or later (sorry to remind you, but nuclear reactors have a finite lifetime), so why not start planning for a local renewables electricity generation infrastructure right now?
And in your particular case, get some training in nuclear plant decommissioning, your days of spreading pro-nuclear propaganda for a living are numbered.
Just as a reminder, Exelon wanted to shutdown Ginna already, but managed to get an extension by blackmailing local politicians into authorizing them to charge millions of consumers for the extraordinary costs of keeping Ginna going. But sooner or later Exelon executives are going to come back, fire everybody and shutdown the plant for good. Blame them, not me when that happens. And hopefully no nuclear accident will happen at the plant before they shut it down. One really has to wonder how that relic from the 70’s (with technology from the 60’s!) is still working…

Let’s work out some rough numbers for the amount of plutonium on the Ginna power plant site. The plant has been operating for 45 years, let’s say at an average 80% capacity factor. A 1GWe reactor produces roughly 300kg of plutonium per year, so a very rough estimate for the minimal amount of plutonium on the site where you work is 300 x 0.8 x 0.6 x 45 = 6480 kg of plutonium, or roughly enough plutonium for 500 atomic bombs with the same yield as the Hiroshima bomb. In other words, just on the site where you work, there is enough fissile material to completely destroy the US and contaminate the entire northern hemisphere, killing half the Earth’s population in the following years.

Except the plutonium is in once used fuel assemblies, very difficult to transport, the plutonium you mention is mostly unusable for weapons production after being in the core for 3 cycles. The most deadly substance on Earth is probably di-hydrogen monoxide (DHMO) which has been responsible for millions of deaths over the years, mostly due to inhalation, I would bet you keep this chemical (DHMO) in your home! Fear mongering is not pretty and you try very hard to make it scary, but it’s only scary to those who live in the darkness of ignorance, it’s not nearly so scary in the light of knowledge….

Wrong again Lester, or you are trying to spread disinformation as usual. Spent nuclear fuel still contains 0.83% of U-235 and 0.80% of Pu-239, both of which can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Actually, that you accept to work in close proximity of tonnes of U-235 and Pu-239, enough fissile material to destroy the U.S. and kill half the world’s population, and do not even think about it in critical terms, is a clear sign of your total lack of awareness of the seriousness of these issues.
It is clear that you are totally unqualified to comment on anything related to nuclear technology, be it safety, financial viability or anything else.

Plutonium-240 is the second most common isotope, formed by occasional neutron capture by Pu-239. Its concentration in nuclear fuel builds up steadily, since it does not undergo fission to produce energy in the same way as Pu-239. (In a fast neutron reactor it is fissionablec, which means that such a reactor can utilise recycled plutonium more effectively than a LWR.) While of a different order of magnitude to the fission occurring within a nuclear reactor, Pu-240 has a relatively high rate of spontaneous fission with consequent neutron emissions. This makes reactor-grade plutonium entirely unsuitable for use in a bomb . Reactor-grade plutonium is defined as that with 19% or more of Pu-240. This is also called ‘civil plutonium’.
It takes about 10 kilograms of nearly pure Pu-239 to make a bomb (though the Nagasaki bomb in 1945 used less). Producing this requires 30 megawatt-years of reactor operation, with frequent fuel changes and reprocessing of the ‘hot’ fuel. Hence ‘weapons-grade’ plutonium is made in special production reactors by burning natural uranium fuel to the extent of only about 100 MWd/t (effectively three months), instead of the 45,000 MWd/t typical of LWR power reactors. Allowing the fuel to stay longer in the reactor increases the concentration of the higher isotopes of plutonium, in particular the Pu-240 isotope, as can be seen in the Table above. For weapons use, Pu-240 is considered a serious contaminant, due to higher neutron emission and higher heat production. It is not feasible to separate Pu-240 from Pu-239. An explosive device could be made from plutonium extracted from low burn-up reactor fuel (i.e. if the fuel had only been used for a short time), but any significant proportions of Pu-240 in it would make it hazardous to the bomb makers, as well as probably unreliable and unpredictable. Typical ‘reactor-grade’ plutonium recovered from reprocessing used power reactor fuel has about one third non-fissile isotopes (mainly Pu-240) http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Fuel-Recycling/Plutonium/

Indeed yes it was, but did you or the author of the article ever live or work in Japan? Whereas you admitted to living close to a nuclear reactor and working at the Ginna nuclear power plant, so I guess you have more and better information about the Ginna power plant than the Fukushima powerplant. So how about we compare Fukushima to Ginna, which you claim to know so well?

First off the Fukushima plants were boiling water reactors, which are a totally different design than Ginna which is a pressurized water reactor. Fukushima was built on the ocean in an earthquake zone, Ginna was built on lake Ontario in an area not considered an earthquake zone. There is no chance of a tsunami at Ginna, never the less Ginna used the Fukushima operating experience to upgrade equipment and procedures to deal with greater than design basis events. I am not a spokesperson, so I am not authorized to talk about plant specifics. I did however teach nuclear power fundamentals and Instrumentation and control for about 10 years, as well as being a reactor operator on US Navy submarines, so I do have a broad range of knowledge. What is your education/knowledge level so I know where to begin?

However one thing to note is that I have directly challenged you to refute a single thing I have said that is factually incorrect yet you have not taken me up on the challenge.
Why is that?
Does your argument style only work if you avoid examining facts and stick to personal attacks and unsupported assertions?
I challenge you again to speak about verifiable facts.
Will you be brave enough or will you continue as you have been?

I also note that you want to frame the conversation about nuclear power as a choice between different low carbon power sources. Mainstream science like the IPCC says that climate change is serious and that we should deploy all low carbon energy sources including nuclear power.

“greenthinker2012”, nothing that you say is credible, because you are just another anonymous troll working for the nuclear industry propaganda machine and all your lies are easily debunked.
Now shoo, go lay an egg or decommission a nuclear reactor for a change!

I figured you would avoid my challenge.
Yet more baseless claims by Andre Balsa.
If nothing I say is credible then it should be easy for you to point out something that I have said that is verifiably untrue.

ROFL. that is the worst kind of reprisal. Denial of opinion and fact by attempting to sideline the argument to being an industry troll.
Under that same discourse you are nothing but a troll for the other side here in a conservative site that is giving legal and scientifically proven opposing views to yours.
You are actually he troll!

Because I have actually talked to real nuclear physicists/scientists and people in the nuclear power industry including experts in radiation protection (every plant has a radiological protection department staffed by professionals) and I trust them a lot more than anyone else. I’m not in denial at all. I know the reality of nuclear power and support it. I would be very happy to have a plant in my backyard if I could benefit from the inexpensive power it produced. I get sick and tired of ignorant fear-mongers. It’s a little like the climate change crap.

How many Deaths are attributed to the Nuclear test explosions off the Bikini Islands?
Were you aware that the native population has returned to the Island, and lives there with no side-effects from radiation, even though there is higher levels of radiation than in the surrounding islands?

hmm and tell me, these children were they eating seafoods from the area fo the plant? did they have a very high iodine intake to begin with (remember that can cause the same disease). Had they been tracking and testing children of this area over several generations? can they show that there is not a genetic or other influence, how many were direct descendent of Atomic bomb victims?? There are too many variables.

“Government” and regulatory constructs that work in the common interest have combined resources that can test for radiation in the commons as well as private property to greater effect/efficiency to safeguard against the proven deficient self regulation of industry (that has shown itself through historical environmental disasters in nuclear and fossil fuel technologies). The public should not have to test for toxins, radiation and other pollutants in their environment and food that are put their either intentionally or through externalities of industry and other violating unethical activities. Fukushima was disastrous both to human health, the surrounding ecosystem and the Pacific marine environment.

I support government testing and regulations.
However, there are people who do not trust the government and who complain that they do not know how much radiation they are being exposed to.
For these people, the solution is not to live in continuos fear, but to simply make the measurements themselves.
There are some great citizen run organizations that do just that and post their results online for all to see.
Safecast.org is one such organization.

There are NO cleaner alternatives….with the exception of spent fuel. That can and should be handled in a different manner. I am unsure what that manner is however oil and coal is far dirtier and causes more environmental damage that any modern nuclear plant could.

Seriously??? Are all of your comments just ad hominem/unsubstantive bullying against those who have a different opinion from you? Why do you project divisive, unsubstantiated ideological labels on commenters when you have no facts or context to base such bullying comments on? For what political or profit motive does your mal-intent come from?

Cathie Reid – Do you eat bananas? Or drink Coffee?
These two items alone emit massive amounts of radiation. So much so that they set off the radiation detectors at shipping ports of entry as they come off the boats.
Heck, even sea water is moderately radioactive; has been since … Forever. Tritium is a naturally occurring thing; which is something I learned in my Junior High Natural Science class, 50 years ago.

Do you know how many deaths purely from radiation there were from the Chernobyl accident? 12
Nature is recovering nicely now that the State closed off the area to all but scientists, and there aren’t any people living there. For now.
Do you know how many deaths purely from radiation there were from the incident at Three-Mile Island? 0
Are you aware that no one even caught a whiff of radiation sickness from there? None!
Do you know how many deaths purely from radiation there were in Hiroshima? 300-350.
There were several thousand that died as a result of secondary causes, just like in this instance; but in a population of over a million, that is an amazingly small number.

My numbers came from a study out of England, in the early 2000s, from a small unknown college called Cambridge.

Probably the seals are having problems due to the changes created by the pollution/carbon from fossil fuel use changing the oceans, which may have been avoided if we had adopted more nuclear energy and displaced more fossil fueled power..

Likely a combination. However, suggesting that nuclear should have displaced fossil fuel sources is (with its unacceptable risks and high infrastructure and refurbishing costs) like suggesting whaling harpoons should have displaced buggy whips. We don’t need to be going backwards in technology, protections and sustainability.

Except for the fact that nuclear power is the safest way to make electricity. and the levels of radioactivity released by Fukushimia is insignificant when compared with the natural radiation already in the ocean. The risk is less than other means of creating electricity. New nuclear power plants can be inherently safe. Nuclear power is the future, it is a newer technology than solar or wind powered electrical generation.

You’ll have to keep on spinning on there Michael. Wind and solar spills are called ‘a nice day’…nuclear…not so much. There is no such thing as an inherently safe nuclear plant. This article was about the disaster at Fukushima…that was a disaster.

Except it’s not spin…it’s true to empirical fact. Yes, I’ve read the catchy phrase used by renewable energy spokespeople. Nice that they have a technology where their spills are not disastrous or harmful. Where’s the error in risk perception to point out that not all potential threats can be forseen (as evidenced with the Fukushima disaster)?

Fukushima was a disaster that should have been avoided, but it also showed just how safe the technology (50 year old) really is, three meltdowns, no immediate deaths due to radiation poisoning and no statistically significant increase in cancer is expected. Reactors can be designed to be inherently safe. http://thoriumremix.com/th/

Your diversionary strawman and irrelevant questions are not on point to the article nor worth lending voice to. Keep on spinning on there boys. Renewable energy sources that do not pose catastrophic risk and that can be readily distributed in decentralized fashion, are the way of the future.

Cathy, “Michael Mann” (obviously not the climate scientist) and a few others here in this comments section are a mob of vicious trolls paid by the nuclear industry. They move from website to website as a swarm, spreading misinformation and abuse on anybody expressing any negative opinion on the nuclear industry.

You think you know, have you caught all the math shills? They claim to be independent but they all seem to answer 2+2=4, if they weren’t in on it together, why do they all say the same thing? What is your definition of shill? Someone with knowledge? Someone with hands on experience? Since when is knowing something about the subject about which you have an opinion been a negative? I am in no way paid to post, I am in no way told what to post, I do have over 35 years experience as a qualified radiation worker. Why do you find it easier to believe the idiot with the sandwich board yelling on the street corner than someone with actual experience and consequences for not telling the truth? You’re severely lacking in logical thinking..

You are willfully blind to your vested interest in the “radiation” business and industry ideological worldview bias. There is no question that nuclear technology has advanced and that, under optimal conditions appears on paper to look low risk/rational…however, as the Fukushima disaster illustrates, not all threats/risks/externalities are predictable, nor the profit motive/regulatory environment trustworthy. Now with thawing permafrost, the previously contained radioactive waste is an emerging/looming environmental threat that we need not add to. The known risks and high infrastructure costs in an environment of less costly/less risky renewable and decentralized sources of energy…make nuclear an illogical choice.

Fukushima showed 1960’s technology faced with record breaking earthquake and tsunami, 3 reactors lost cooling, melted the cores and still the expected health effects are expected to be too small to measure. Newer designs will not need power for cooling, and generation 4 reactors promise to be fueled from the poorly named “high level waste” of current reactors and “walk away safe” To ignore the benefits this technology could provide is just not prudent when we need to reduce fossil fuel use as quickly as possible. Check out this video about the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) the potential benefits are world changing. http://thoriumremix.com/th/

You ignore the fact that renewable, decentralized technologies exist and can meet energy security needs. There is no need to invest in the infrastructure for sources with radioactive/toxic risks/health externalities. Repackaging nuclear is just lip stick on a pig in a vegan environment.

I don’t ignore anything, I like the other “renewable” clean power, but by any measure nuclear energy is just as “renewable” just as “green” and more reliable than wind and solar. There is no reason nuclear energy should be singled out. We need all our clean energy to replace fossil fuels and raise the standard of living of humanity. It is not possible without nuclear power, the clean energy production methods are NOT mutually exclusive. To exclude nuclear power because of lack of understanding and irrational fear is self defeating.

Unfortunately the people with the most technical know-how and resources to design and operate these liquid reactors make their profit through the manufacture of the solid fuel, which is not needed for a liquid core reactor. They would effectively be competing with their existing revenue stream.

I got some good advice from a friend. ” Think of it as a compliment. It means they have no reply to your sound reasoning. If they are calling you a shill they think you make such a strong case you have to be a paid professional!” So thank you for the compliment!

Michael, I’ve already posted evidence that counters disinformation put forward in this industry piece. As I do not know you or have evidence, I cannot know that you are paid to post, but special interest propagandists (who often are employed or otherwise benefit economically from an industry) need not be paid to spread disinformation.

Cathie, if indeed you are not paid, then you have proven your hypothesis, you are a propagandist and you spread disinformation. I post the truth as I see it based on over 35 years of hands on experience and training. What experience and training do you have to judge the validity of your posts? When you do the research and find out that you’ve been fooled, will you be angry with those that misguided you in the first place and will you apologize for the part you played in spreading the misinformation? We both seem to be a reasonable, caring people you just seem a little confused on whom you should believe. I admit when I am wrong, I hope you have the same integrity.

You three are hilarious. Men in the atomic industry attempting to have last word to defend the industry by posting irrelevant/strawman disinformation to distract from the comments and science that evidence that this article )claiming that there was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima)…is false. The risks of nuclear are unacceptable to those of rational mind, given that they are no longer required due to the availability of lower risk renewable energy sources that do not have the high infrastructure costs and lead times. My integrity is intact…yours…not so much.

Lester, the hypocrisy of that last post of yours is so obvious that it makes me want to puke. Stop attacking Cathie Reid and tell the rest of your vicious mob friends to lay off too, let’s go back to discussing how you’ll soon be out of work at the 45-year old Ginna nuclear power plant!

That’s weak, Lester. But hey, don’t you have work to do at the Ginna nuclear plant, as you claimed before? Or do you post on social media while in the office, and that hypocritical pro-nuclear propaganda and abuse spreading part of your job?

“Exelon has said it is losing tens of millions of dollars a year at Ginna, and has asked RG&E to pay a premium price for the plant’s electricity to return Ginna to profitability.”

Numbers don’t lie, Lester. Instead of trolling on social media you should be arguing with the guys in grey suits at Exelon, because they are going to fire you soon enough.

Who is the Nuclear Energy Institute? The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is a US-based propaganda and lobbying organization (obviously they are headquartered in Washington. D.C.) setup by the nuclear industry, with a budget of more than $50 million per year. The NEI not only finances the troll activities on social media such as the abuse and misinformation clearly seen here in this comments section, but also “lobbies” (i.e. pays) national and local politicians to get the approval for the construction of new nuclear reactors and life extensions for past-their-design-lifetime nuclear power plants such as the Ginna power plant.
Lester, the CEO of Exelon is the Chairman of the NEI, which basically means the NEI is your employer. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to expose who is behind you and your little mob of vicious trolls in this comments section.

Your style of circular logic amazes me! You must be real good at5 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Please explain why I have never received a check for my services? Have you given up on the theory that I work for the C.I.A.? That one was kind of funny. I do not work for NEI or CIA or NSA or any other acronym, I work as an instrument and control technician at the Robert Emmett Ginna nuclear power plant, my opinions are my own based on over 35 years experience. I am part of the “mob of truth and science” You on the other hand are a science denier with an anonymous blank avatar. All my posts are visible, I welcome people to read them and make their own decisions.

Here is one of the dirty tactics used by the Nuclear Energy Institute to deny US citizens their basic rights to decide whether or not they want a nuclear plant built in their backyard:

“The NEI is also steamrolling the approval process for new nuclear plants. The original process required companies to obtain separate permits to construct and operate new nuclear plants. “At each of those two stages, the public or anybody could intervene, if they met standing requirements and had a valid technical contention, not just some rooted opposition to nuclear power,” explains Dave Lochbaum, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ nuclear safety program. NEI started pushing to change the new plant approval process in the 1980s.

The current process not only combines plant construction and operating permits, but also seems designed to stymie local opposition. Companies get permission to build a new nuclear plant at a particular site at any point over twenty years, while specific reactor designs are certified separately. “That process eliminates public participation, because the reactor design is being certified, but nobody knows where it will go. It’s hard to fight a reactor that may or may not be built in your backyard,” says Lochbaum. “The public can watch, but that’s about it.” Lochbaum adds that citizens have more rights to oppose a Wal-Mart in their neighborhood than they do a nuclear power plant.”

Yes, tie it up forever with frivolous intervention, then complain that it takes so long for approval that it’s not economical… I can’t see why people wouldn’t see that as fair and equitable….do the same for wind, methane gas, coal, hydro and solar projects too, all the same, right, fair is fair.. It sounds to me like everyone will be freezing in the dark before another power project gets built.

The Nuclear Energy Institute sure knows how to make sure taxpayers’ money ends up as subsidies for the nuclear industry:

“In 2006, NEI sponsored the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s softball team, took part in Congressional caucus golf outings, and funded literally hundreds of Congressional “fact-finding” trips to Las Vegas that included tours of Yucca Mountain.

“It’s hard to imagine an industry that’s more brazen in its quest for ever-larger federal subsidies,” says Environment America’s Anna Aurilio. “They already get their waste completely taken care of, they already get a guaranteed cap on liability in case of an accident…. Any problem that could happen with the nuclear industry, the U.S. taxpayer is ultimately going to have to pick up. And yet, they keep coming back to Congress for more and more and more.”

Come on Lester, you are a paid social media troll, you don’t work in the field, you work in front of a small screen regurgitating the pro-nuclear propaganda and misinformation that the guys in plush offices at the NEI headquarters in Washington DC emailed to you, just like the information about the Ginna power plant that you copy-pasted from a PDF on the NEI website.

I have blown your cover, Lester, better find another fake identity to post your propaganda and abuse from now on.

Lester, did you know that these registered federal lobbyists working for NEI make more than $200,000 each per year? And that the US federal government subsidizes nuclear energy to the tune of $0.08 per kWh, more than twice the cost of wind or solar?

Are you serious? I am who I say I am, you are proving yourself to be totally without integrity. I knew your propaganda was false, now you lie about my personal life. As I said I post under my given name, no alias, I am Michael Mann, an I&C technician at Ginna as I said. I’m not sure if you believe your own lies, you’re so detached from reality you should seek help. How does lying about me help your cause? Thank you for posting that it’s this Lester guy who is a paid shill and not me. I am totally truthful about who I am, who are you?

This is top-notch paranoia. You’re perfectly open about the fact that you work at a nuclear power station. In the normal world, someone who disagreed with you could simply say “ah, but you earn your money from the industry, of course you’re biased”. Which may or may not be fair, but it would not be irrational to say.

This isn’t good enough for our André. It’s not good enough that you’re a technician in the energy industry with opinions of your own about energy that he may or may not agree with. In his mind, you actually have to be part of a team specifically being paid to disagree with him on the Internet. That is the only possible explanation in his mind for someone expressing a different view to him.

(for full disclosure: he thinks I’m an operative for the American nuclear industry with access to special software he made up. No matter it’s plain from my Disqus feed I am neither American nor live there… Such details are for the birds.)

Skip that thought. Perhaps it matters little what you think because well … of course! It’s so obvious now that you point it out “André”. It’s so easy to post something on the Internet under an alias. So you’re obviously a coal industry or oil industry shill …. oh hell, how did I miss it, you’re obviously a shill of both industries! Yes that’s it, Andre the super-shill! Damn you’re good!

Yes, I have the audacity to post under my given name, the one on my driver’s license, it seems to bother this “Andre” who obviously doesn’t have the integrity to post the truth. (He knows it’s my real name ant still posts his lies because he wants to derail the conversation) You can see him make the same comment repeatedly if you look at my posting history.

Gee, Cathie… I agree that we should all have some sort of electric power generation equipment mounted on our homes, especially for times when the grid is not capable of keeping my TV powered up for the Cricket match.
Pray tell, how does one acquire one that non-centralized electrical power that did not increase pollution levels during the manufacturing process? Or, if we must use the power grid, is there a reliable, constant, and consistent power source that not require power to generate power?

Why not play cricket instead of watching it on TV?…now there’s a better diversionary discussion since you like to distract from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Cut the subsidies for huge nuclear/fossil fuel infrastructure and invest in clean technology solutions to augment the existing ample substitution alternatives.

I am physically handicapped, therefore I cannot play. Nor are there any pitches near where I currently live.
I agree, all subsidies for any and every business should be eliminated. Governments should not ‘prop up’ any private business. If a business can not stand on it’s own, it should shut down. The same goes for individual citizens. They should learn to stand on their own.

Judging by the reaction to threats to drinking water posed by ‘scrubbing’ coal powerplant exhaust* and accumulating tipples of unstable radioactive toxic ash in degrading plastic liners, the threat of action by the AG over radiation must seem remote. * Coal Ash Section Front at SourceWatch. The EPA is said to license pollution rather than prevent it, containing civil liabilities by involving the government. That sounds about right as it the same tactic used in employee harm claims.

ENENEWS is full of lies. As for these symptoms. People can imagine they have all sorts of symptoms if told they probably have something wrong with them that they don’t understand. This is looked at in this video which was very well done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw33AVqzQxA

I’d rather talk to my son who is a nuclear tech that spent 10 years in the Navy in radiological control and is currently doing the same in a large nuclear power plant. Don’t believe everything you read from many sources who love to sensationalize. In fact, what you cite are largely based on the same irrational fear that the author of this article denounces. Headlines are largely BS as discussed in the article, yet you persist in presenting them as fact?

Frank Energy cannot be trusted, he has no evidence, because he makes stuff up. The evidence proves that the fuel pools were never uncovered, there was no nuclear explosion, there were no radiation casualties .

My son is a highly respected Radiological Protection Manager at a nuclear power station today and could write a dissertation on your subject if he had the time. Nice try but I don’t need to take his time reporting a damned thing to you.

You asked a stupid question that deserved no response at all. I gave you one anyway and you want to pick a fight? You really expect me to try and get him to respond to you? Why should he? Forrest Gump’s mom was right.

Frank Energy alias NukePro is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect; he believes operating an anti-nuclear conspiracy blog is equivalent to actually taking classes, being qualified and then gaining years of actual hands on experience. He is sadly mistaken, thank you for your son’s service..

Sharon, in regards to said article, I really didn’t seen any evidence produced.

I am MSME Northwestern and MSME University of Michigan, with specialties in probability and statistics.

There are weak and misleading arguments on both sides of the issue.

But looking at the actual data can be instructive. I was always of
the “of course man made pollutants are causing some warming, how
couldn’t they be.” In 2014 I grabbed the data, all the data on global
temps from 1880 to 2014, plotted them and ran stats on them. Even
allow people to download the actual data and the spreadsheet in which
the charts and stats are done.

18 years of “no warming”. Prior warming trend about same slope as
the warming in the early 1900’s, which goes against the narrative that
the current increase is “so much faster” than ever before.
We just had an El Nino event which results in higher temperatures
which we saw in 2016. That is most likely to be attributed to El Nino
and not to “global warming” or the hedged statement of…”Climate change

Yes, irrational and promoted by fear-,mongers. We are surrounded by radiation every single day. Its a natural part of our environment. People who fly from New York to Los Angeles are exposed to more radiation in that one flight than the average nuclear power plant worker is exposed to in an entire year. No doubt the degree of exposure matters greatly, but that’s the entire point. Nuclear power plants have proven to be far safer than most industrial facilities simply based on employee as well as public injury.

The reports of sailors harmed by Fukushima radiation are bunk. Did it ever occur to you that a few sailors might see an easy payday by making such claims? The media reporting loves to sensationalize and depends on silly people that believe everything they hear. And before you make any ridiculous remarks, my son is a highly trained nuclear radiation protection specialist with 10 years experience in the Navy before entering private industry. The headlines were a pile of doggie doodoo.

I had a friend who worked on the Manhattan project. He’d heat the crucible lining to glowing and do a mass spectroscopy to determine the purity. I don’t know how often he did this, working with plutonium but he was quite old and healthy last I saw him in the nineties. On the other hand we now live in an ocean of radiation of many strengths and lengths. It can’t be a good thing.

It was higher in the past, don’t make assumptions based on no data. Radiation levels were higher millions of years ago and have been trending down since the begining of time. Nuclear power contributes almost nothing to your total exposure, Our average exposure has gone up, but it is due to increased use of medical diagnostics which have improved our health, radiophobia is a scary thing. http://hps.org/documents/environmental_radiation_fact_sheet.pdf

I remember in school when a teacher came in while we were using Geiger counters and they began to scream. Due to his receiving (I before E?) a dose of iodine for his thyroid which they did end up taking most of. Well there is that as well as the various accidents but radiation is more than solar and cetera. Electromagnetic in general. Years ago the shortwave was good because there was so very little static. Today in spite of improvements it isn’t worth trying to use. The use of power tools,cell phones, radio, television and everywhere on the emf spectrum is clogged! And what about the hole in the ozone layer that you probably still think was caused by fluorocarbons? It has shrunk despite the greatly increased use of them but perhaps it was another cause? Anyway the solar radiation is greatly decreased too now so that is less relevant here. They cool the meltdown, and it is a meltdown, by constantly running the ocean water over it and dumping it into the sea. But yes, radiation from nuclear decay has decreased from millions of years ago. But regarding radiophobia, the greater danger even than x ray is the damage to our immune systems from chemicals in our environment. Okay so I rant and this is of little concern to me. But how about AGW? Any thoughts?

Natural seawater, even 200 years ago, before the atomic age, was and is radioactive. About 13,000 mBq/litre. Mostly from 40K and 210Po.

The radioactive 137Caesium found in North Pacific waters near the coast of North America has been 0.5-3.0 mBq/litre from past bomb tests. Fukushima’s contribution, in the few places where it has been found, combined with the bomb residue, comes to 3-30 mBq/litre … You can find a sample with 100 mBq/litre of Caesium, within sight of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor … but – the radioactive material in a cubic metre of seawater, without any contamination, is around 13,000 mBq/litre. That’s the natural portion.

If you had a chance to be a tourist in the Dead Sea, would you swim in it? I would. The excess salt makes a tremendous buoyancy. The Dead Sea has more than 183,000 mBq/litre of radioactive material in it. ” … found in the Persian Gulf (22 Bq/kg) [22,528 mBq/litre], the Red Sea (15 Bq/kg) [15,360 mBq/litre], and the eastern Mediterranean (14.6 Bq/kg) [14,950 mBq/litre]. ”The average activity (both natural and anthropogenic) for the world’s oceans is 13.6 Bq/kg water. [13,926 mBq/litre] More than 88% of this activity is due to the naturally occurring potassium isotope 40K [12,255 mBq/litre]”.

Nice post Voodood, thanks and yes I’ve always wanted to go to the dead sea and float. We actually have a small dead sea here in Oklahoma; if you go to google earth and keep zoning in on the white speck in the north central part of the state you’ll see it. But all the water’s gone.

Visit it, carrying a beta-gamma rad detector. You’ll find it quite ‘hot’ … place the rad detector in a tupperware (which shields the beta, but has no effect on the gamma) and measure again. Probably 1/10th the rad, inside the tupperware. Probably 40Potassium.

I have no information on the radioactivity levels in Salt Lake (Utah), which is why I use the “Dead Sea” figures.

Thew few who rolled their eyes only did so because of information fed to them by their superiors. Who took the bait from someone elses information that has never had to deal with a fukushima type problem. I know a nuclear scientist who was part of the beginnings of Americas first tests. One time before an underground explosion test, him and his scientist buddies where joking about how they thought they could just stand above the bomb on the surface and just bend their knees a little when it explodes. When it came time they were a mile or so up on a ridge looking down on the valley. The entire valley turned into what looked like dusty water when that nuke went off. My point being the govt scientists miscalculated BIGTIME and still do to this day. New thesis trumps the last. This is unprecedented. EXPECT MORE MASS DIE OFFS IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

Nuclear bombs are not the same as nuclear power plants and nuclear science has learned a lot since those early days. There are no die offs from Fukushima radiation anymore than there were die offs from the salt shakers on the titanic….

Well Matt, I am so glad you feel there is no cause for alarm… It seems to me that your idea of “clean up” is based upon a manageable problem. However, a major melt-down could contaminate the whole area and bleed into the Pacific which would make the scope of the disaster huge.

hysteria??? You were exposed, I take it? Get back to me in 20 years, if the exposure hasn’t killed you or filled your children and grandkids with cancers from the poison, I’ll apologize for my “hysteria”.

CW and Jamie, let me know when you are ready to abandon modern living in your safe comfortable homes, I’ll be happy to show you how to survive off the grid. Because that’s what we all will be doing within a few generations if we don’t build more nuclear facilites and modernize current plants.

I do understand why nuclear power is needed and it is cheap (that is the only real reason why it is so popular), but I can not understand why it is so hard peoples to think, some day we could collect all our energy from zero-pollution ways. Great efficiency increments has been successfully invented i.e in car industry, electronics and why that should not apply to solar, wind power and other renewals too ? Why we should not use even slice of the money of new nuke plant to hire professionals like original writer to find us the way out of nuclear power ?

If Fukushima accident were happened in USA close to some big city, many of you would write here other story…

efficiency like coal-burning electric cars? I take it you have no idea about physics, either, because solar and wind are much more inefficient than just about other energy production method, including rubbing two sticks together.

I can not understand why it is so hard peoples to think, some day we could collect all our energy from zero-pollution ways. Great efficiency increments has been successfully invented i.e in car industry, electronics and why that should not apply to solar, wind power and other renewals too

I can’t really speak for all those people, but I might venture a guess – they have working knowledge of physics.

If Fukushima accident were happened in USA close to some big city, many of you would write here other story…

Well, there are some practices in choosing places for nuclear build-up and lo and behold: One of them is not to place nukes in the immediate vicinity of big cities.

More nuclear facilities? How do you like living among the thousands of bags of nuclear waste? Nice and clean hey? Have a look at Japan’s current problem, go view some pics of the atrocity of a wasteland they created

Then why are fish being caught that are radioactive. I believe this is a disaster but we are not going to realize the disaster fully for a while. The ocean will tell the story and I believe that birth defects will rise.

I agree. And birth defects have been rising already. The info is out there but media is covering the whole thing up. Very sad what is happening. The industry is lying to protect their industry and profits. Government will not educate people either. Read through enenews.com, these are all legit headlines that date back to when this all started. Inform people.

This is hype. The Fukushima accident – not ‘incident’ – has yet to unfurl its entire impact. Just wait and see. This guy is a CEO and has blatant vested interests; our intrinsic energy problem is that we’re STILL trying to work on an epic centralised basis, we lose so much energy just in transporting it, but the idea of smaller, localised generation of power requirements wouldn’t make fatcats like THIS guy, any money. Small is beautiful. Small scale, local, generating what you need when you need it, is the way to avoid more of the same. Fukushima was a disaster, I suspect there is a clue in the name.

Triple core meltdown is not an ‘accident’ or ‘incident’
100% meltdown of 3 reactors double the size of the one reactor from Chernobyl… the fuel pools are missing and rods are missing and destroyed. The isotopes were liberated into the air and it continues to leak into the ocean daily. The plume was released in 2011 and has not stopped.

Dr Kemm, if you believe this to be true, I will arrange for you, and your children
to live at the reactor site, eating the food the workers eat, drinking the water,
for 6 months.
If you have small grandchildren we can include them in this. If the radiation is that small, then you should have no concern for your grandkids.

so..and what about the tunafish caught around california that has much higher radiation levels? and what about those pictures of mutated vegetables from japan? and what about the latest message that the fukushima workers are suffering stronger radiation than thought? i am looking forward to your explanations kelvin kemm.

K stands for potassium. Potassium-40 is a natural radioisotope, half-life 1.28 billion years, long enough for that an atom the Earth incorporated when it formed decayed just now in your left hand. 134Cs and 137Cs stand for the two cesium radioisotopes that got out of Fukushima.

These are handy radioactive atoms to look for because when they decay they emit gamma rays, which can slip through a few feet of water or flesh, i.e., out of a dried fish sample and into the detector surrounding it, where they deposit characteristic amounts of energy that allow identification of what kind of atom it was that decayed.

Other atoms — MB&F mention polonium, which you may recall as Litvinenko’s bane — emit very short-range rays that could not be thus detected, but deposit their energy within the fish, exposing it much more.

Before you assume that this gentleman has shared “the truth” it’s probably not a bad idea to check with physicists who are not hired guns for a nuclear management company. There are also scientists, a few anyway, who believe global warming/climate change isn’t happening. To even make the statement “no one was killed by the radiation” is profoundly ignorant. Rarely does anyone ever immediately die from radiation poisoning. There are others things, but this alone is enough to throw doubt upon either the sincerity of the man, or at a minimum his intellectual prowess.

Seeing as he is a recognized expert in his field of nuclear physics your claim that he has a minimum intellectual prowess is childish. His statement that nobody has been killed by the radiation is, in fact, true. I will concede that the years may tell a different story, but my guess would be that the numbers will be on par with those of people living down wind from coal fired power plants. Before you try to ridicule my statement about radiation and coal fired power plants, read this- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste and research it as you see fit.

They studied the forces of nature deeply and configured those forces so they could build some of the most destructive mass human killing machines ever imagined.
To display their newly perfected killing abilities and instill fear in all national groups they used the new weapon against two unprotected cities, roasting hundreds of thousands of the people of Nippon.
Then to show their supposed gentler side, they adapted that destructive technology to generate electricity. Whenever any life threatening accident takes place at one of these plants they or their hired spokes people scream in utter amazement. “Why are you people so afraid, this stuff is perfectly safe. Why do you imagine that we would create anything that would hurt you! Don’t you people trust us!”
They so quickly forget their own history.

I work in the nuclear industry and have seen the dose rates at the site, so Dr. Kemm is wrong. There was a massive accident, fuel rods are strewn all over the site and TEPCO has no idea how to even begin to contain the leaks.

Your story is a fabrication. The mere fact that you stated the fuel rods are lying around in the open air indicates your lack of understanding regarding actual rad doses of used fuel rods that are not covered by water.

Additionally the fuel rods are right where they should be despite the proclamations of many anti-nuclear fear mongers who are scaring the Japanese public literally to death.

The fuel pools are stable and are not going to cause the death of anyone as long as the workers follow proper industrial safety protocols that have already been established in previous spent fuel moves which are now fairly common in the US.

hippies were very biased…..i recall in 1969 at jr college a gathering with many liberals at the time my head had been shaved because i was a scholarship athlete and that was the initiation also i wore regular clothing of the time…..several liberals pointed me out and started in on me about being with the man because of my scholarship……i asked what is the problem with the man they responded they try to tell me how to dress and how to wear my hair i am an individual….i laughingly pointed out you are DOING the very thing to me that you are whining about, YOU have a problem with me because of my hair and clothing……at age 17 i then understood the liberal mindset total BS based on emotion without a single actual thought involved.

Dont believe him, Luca is a nuke ind shill as well.
There are government models of the dispersion of the plume from Japan to Canada and USA.
Snopes is a joke and should not be considered ‘information’.

I want to believe you, but you are a
CEO of a company pushing for nuclear energy…so you have an agenda. How
can we know you aren’t skewing this information and misleading us? Humans
are imperfect and make many mistakes, we are never going to be able to
perfectly control nuclear technology, there will always be accidents. And
I don’t think it’s responsible to take even the slightest risk with something
like ionizing radiation. The consequences of Chernobyl are sickening.
Watch “Chernobyl Heart” and you will see what ionizing
radiation can do to the body. Any radiation, even the slightest is not good for
anyone. I understand you believe the Fukushima coverage was over the top
and unrealistic, but this article seems to be completely dismissing the risk at
all. Maybe it was only a small amount of radiation leaked into the water,
but what about the hundreds of nuclear power plants that all give off small
amounts of radiation routinely. It is impossible to get all of the
radiation out of the steam and water that is released in the standard
processing. I know it’s small, tiny even, but these particles take tens
of thousands of thousands of years to break down even half of it. Nuclear
technology is irresponsible and dangerous, and even as the technology improves
or if better management occurs, we are never going to get to a point where
there isn’t radiation building up in the environment, increasing exposure for
everyone with no real way of getting rid of it, except burying it in the ground
and hoping it doesn’t leak, hoping people aren’t too stupid or careless to do
their jobs correctly and actually follow safety protocol. We should be
putting our energy into finding a safer way to create energy, truly green
energy with no dangerous by-products, rather than try to find a way to better
manage something that will always carry a high risk

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster began 311 (11 March 2011) and In the first 24 hours five (5) Japanese men, Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) employees were killed by lethal exposure to radiation. Four (4) GE employees were exposed to radiation high enough to have then swiftly taken back to the U.S. – with the aid of the State Department. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents confirm that. nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima. Radiatioactive fallout was recorded from the north, Hokkaida, and as far south as Okinawa.

That you begin your article disavowing these two clear facts makes it equally clear you disavow the obvious truth – also reported by NBC, ABC, CBS, confirmed by NRC docs, and nothing further that you say can be believed.

if I could also leave photos of the DOE supporting the Japanese MEXT in producing maps of the fallout and how bad it is… amazing level of lies that can only be about keeping nuclear power for the sake of military use. Shameful.

As for Chernobyl… here’s some great information – a lot of folks here apparently do not know about all the research done. and remember that Fukushima is far worse than Chernobyl

Ok scientists, here is an article from the IAEA that documents at the very least thousands of cases of thyroid cancer in Chernobyl: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf
Also, there is a fundamental flaw in a lot of these arguments. Just because he’s a nuclear physicist doesn’t mean he is automatically qualified to discuss the health risks of exposure to radiation. Is he a health professional as well? I live in Japan and have read articles by Japanese doctors who lived and worked near Chernobyl, and many of them believe there is a significant risk of cancer for the people who live near Fukushima. I’ve also seen documentaries that follow the cancer problems and childhood deformities present in populations around Chernobyl. They are easy to find on YouTube. Also, this author makes the mistake of lumping ionizing radiation from man-made isotopes with natural background radiation, which is inaccurate and deceiving. The issue for most of us is what happens when you ingest these isotopes? Though hard to measure exactly, what evidence we do have points to at least some risk, especially for the young. In any case it is not the same as flying in a jet. It’s also a bit early for his grand proclamation that all is well, especially, when it is still unfolding/ongoing. Because of the above, I proclaim this article just as worthless as the sky-is-falling ones.
Everyone’s got an agenda….

If the situation changes, the analysis changes. Right now the effects are harmless and likely to remain so. The effects of radiation are quantifiable and well understood. Dr. Kemm knows of what he writes.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. From the IAEA’s own mouth: “It is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to the Chernobyl accident.”
But good try!

The numbers have been well covered up. It is very easy to not connect the dots between the cause of ‘cancer’ and the industry knows this.
Somebody please tell me again why its ok that the US gov’t just increased allowable cesium in food by 10 times what it used to be?

Sigh…my point was two-fold: 1) uncontained melt-downs of nuclear reactors are not totally harmless, and even the IAEA admits as much. What happened at Chernobyl shows this and refutes what many commenters are saying. People did die, children did get cancer. This is called evidence. Fukushima was and is an uncontained melt-down so it is very unlikely to be totally harmless, and in any case it’s too early to say. 2) The long-term effects from Fukushima will not be easily quantifiable, just as they aren’t with Chernobyl. Again, this is the opinion of the obviously pro-nuke IAEA.

First, Chernobyl and Fukushima are different designs, and the initiating events were different so those facts alone mean the long term recovery paths and effects on the surrounding area will proceed down different paths. Chernobyl did not have a containment building which allowed core material to be spread when the core begin to melt and burn. Fukushima reactors have containment buildings so the melted core material does not automatically have a pathway to the outside environment and the cores did not burn, they are partially melted.

Also not sure why you are stating the core melt down is uncontrolled. The cores are in a cold status since water is being circulated to keep them cool. And that cooling process is being controlled/monitored by the workers. So what is uncontrolled about it? Yes at the time of the tsunami the situation was not fully under control but that was due to poor design decisions that put their emergency diesel generators below the waterline in the same buildings as the reactor equipment instead of a separate facility as we do in the US.

Now if you are talking about the water accumulating in the tanks, that is a different issue. TEPCO has been provided solutions which they have chosen not to listen to at this time. Eventually TEPCO will have to listen to non-Japanese engineers who have solutions if they do not stop these minor issues that keep happening to them. Otherwise the international community will ultimately force to Japanese government to tell TEPCO to give up control of the situation ( my opinion).

Finally the fact that there is radiation does not automatically lead to cancer. Now if you are a believer of LNT (linear no-threshold) as gospel then there is no convincing you of anything different. Many of us who have worked in and on nuclear power plants consider LNT a regulatory safety mandate not a medically proven theory otherwise many of us nuclear workers would already be dead.

Uncontained was probably a poor choice of words, but what I meant was that melt-downs occurred and released significant amounts of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, thus they were not contained (in Fukushima due to the explosions, partial building collapses, and ongoing water-containment issues). That said, I do not believe that radiation automatically leads to cancer; but neither do I think it is reasonable to conclude that Fukushima is 100% harmless, esp. at this early stage. What is logical is to conclude as the WHO did that there will likely be at least a small rise in incidence in Fukushima. I am not a fear-mongerer nor am I an apologist; I’m just striving for accuracy.
What I’m still trying to determine more specifically is what effects ingesting food products from Fukushima may have on my children (and in Japan you often won’t know where your food/drink is actually coming from. Is there absolutely no cause for concern as this author states? Does bioaccumulation and biomagnification of radioactive material pose absolutely no threat down the road?

WHO clearly stated that only certain types of cancer *COULD* see a long term increase from 0.75% up to 1.25% of incidence, and only in certain specific age ranges in females.

Of course the press picked up the news as “a 50% increase in cancer rates” which, while technically correct, means nothing since the figure is so small.

But, the lay people do not know these tiny details, and bad news helps to sell newspapers and ads on the TV shows, so the press doesn’t mind lying, which is where the crux of the problem lies.

There is absolutely no concerns whatsoever on any food bought in Japan. None. In fact, the limits for radiation in Japan are 10 to 20 times lower then they are in the rest of the world, so you may end up eating food that has way more radiation when you are travelling abroad, if you live in Japan.

In any case, such minuscule amounts of radiation in food do not have any impact, neither in Japan nor anywhere else in the world.

Yes Sr-90 accumulation is a concern in fish. However if you remember several years, at least here in the US, there was a major concern of mercury accumulation in those same fishing areas.

The point is that I am more concerned about mercury accumulation in the fish since that is fallout from world wide burning of coal then I am of Sr-90. That is because the concentration levels of mercury from the world wide burning of coal are far higher then the current levels of Sr-90 and other radioactive elements that might be reaching the ocean from Fukushima

The other point to consider is that the media moves from one “crisis” to another “crisis” to sell advertising. Why aren’t we hearing daily, weekly, monthly numbers of mercury concentrations in the fish in the Pacific? Because it isn’t a “crisis” anymore.

And, yes, that is a cynical viewpoint but my cynicism of the media comes from years of seeing false, inaccurate information published by reporters whose only science class was in high school or to meet the minimal requirements to earn their college degree. For example in the US, reporters were known for using hyperbolic towers as backdrops when talking about the badness of nuclear power. One problem with that is several of the hyperbolic towers used on the East Coast for TV reporting were actually used for cooling coal power plants not nuclear power.

So as others have stated, being concerned about the food is a rationale approach but being fearful of the rad levels, without putting those levels into context compered to other areas of the world, is letting the fearmongers rule the day.

Always question the motive of the fearmongers. They don’t always have your best interests at heart. They have their own agenda and usually there is money involved. Caldicott and others receive tens of thousands of dollars in money into their foundations to finance their travels, speaking engagements, books, etc. Some anti-nuclear people make in excess of $100K per year to spread fear, some of which comes from fossil fuel interests. Not exactly an altruistic position. In fact I call that a hypocritical position.

Or how about this, no mention of how the USA FDA just increased allowable levels
of cesium 10 times to what it was before!!!!!!!! Government is allowing
contaminated food as acceptable in the food supply in the US as well as Canada. This fact alone is enough to cause concern. Humans did not have a physiological change overnight to justify this action.

Actually yes US already had blackout plans for the first 48-72 hours. What is going now with FLEX plans is to increase that timeframe up to 7 days and beyond.

There are many ways to vent. US plants had vents. What is going on, again as part of the FLEX mods, is to harden them further. There is debate if this the best solution since the vents will present challenges when filtering for radioactive particles during a potentially large venting event. However since many anti-nuclear intervenors were allowed to have input into the design aspect, the vents are now a